Art And Madness Quotes

Silence in the shell of a city, no baby crying, no car honking, no ambulance shrieking, no lovers moaning, no drunks throwing up in the alley, no lights, nothing but wind and rain and snow in its season and rust and a rattling of open doors and carcass smell. It was a possibility like a brain tumor or a scorpion bite. ~ Anne Roiphe

To be a good artist, you have to serve the work of art and allow it to be what it is supposed to be. ~ Larry Wall

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, fellow members of the motion picture industry and honored guests: This is one of the happiest moments of my life, and I want to thank each one of you who had a part in selecting me for one of their awards, for your kindness. It has made me feel very, very humble; and I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything that I may be able to do in the future. I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry. My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel, and may I say thank you and God bless you. ~ Hattie McDaniel

She wanted to explain everything to him - how certain notes of the Moonlight Sonata shredded her heart like wind inside a paper bag; how her soul felt as endless and deep as the sea churning on their left; how the sight of the young Muslim couple filled her with an emotion that was equal parts joy and sadness; and above all, how she wanted a marriage that was different from the dead sea of marriages she saw all around her, how she wanted something finer, deeper, a marriage made out of silk and velvet instead of coarse cloth, a marriage made of clouds and stardust and red earth and ocean foam and moonlight and sonatas and books and art galleries and passion and kindness and sorrow and ecstasy and of fingers touching from under a burqua. ~ Thrity Umrigar

The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists. ~ E. M. Forster

To my mind, nothing is as important as good writing, because in literature, the walls between people and cultures are broken down, and the things that plague us most - suspicion and fear of the other, and the tendency to see whole groups of people as objects, as monoliths of one cultural stereotype or another - are defeated. This work is not done as a job, ladies and gentlemen, it is done out of love for the art and the artists who brought it forth, and who still bring it forth to us, down the years and across ignorance and chaos and borderlines. ~ Richard Bausch

If you go back to the Greeks and Romans, they talk about all three - wine, food, and art - as a way of enhancing life. ~ Robert Mondavi

So the Eucharist -- in its sumptuous liturgical setting, surrounded by music, art, the word of God, and the prayer of the community -- does more than sustain the divine life in us. It delights us, as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. ~ Robert Barron

Civil Engineering is the art of directing the great sources of Power in Nature for the use and convenience of man; being that practical application of the most important principles of natural Philosophy which has in a considerable degree realized the anticipations of Bacon, and changed the aspect and state of affairs in the whole world. The most important object of Civil Engineering is to improve the means of production and of traffic in states, both for external and internal Trade. ~ Thomas Tredgold

The art of writing is the art of doing what you think you're doing. This is not as simple as it sounds. It implies a very difficult undertaking: the necessity to think. And it implies the requirement to think out three separate, very hard problems: What is it you want to say? How are you going to say it? Have you really said it? ~ Ayn Rand

I love color. It must submit to me. And I love art. I kneel before it, and it must become mine. Everything around me glows with passion. Every day reveals a new red flower, glowing, scarlet red. Everyone around me carries them. Some wear them quietly hidden in their hearts. And they are like poppies just opening, of which one can see only here and there a hint of red petal peeking out from the green bud. ~ Paula Modersohn-Becker

Such incidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life - only art it was that withheld me, - ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I had felt called upon to produce. ~ Ludwig Van Beethoven

I have an Honors Degree in Drama from the University of Alberta, but when it was done I knew a life in modern theatre was not for me. While figuring out what the hell I might do instead of theatre, I spent a couple of days on a horror film doing stunt work. I'd never been behind the camera before, and I loved everything about it. I joined the local film co-op - The Film and Video Arts Society of Alberta - because you could trade skills for experience. These indie filmmakers were making their own stuff their own way, all the time. Instant education. ~ Karen Walton

People like you don't go mad, Vi. They're quiet on the outside and loud on the inside and sane as the day is long ~ April Genevieve Tucholke

A literary creation can appeal to us in all sorts of ways-by its theme, subject, situations, characters. But above all it appeals to us by the presence in it of art. It is the presence of art in Crime and Punishment that moves us deeply rather than the story of Raskolnikov's crime. ~ Boris Pasternak

A great friendship was like a great work of art, he thought. It took time and attention, and a spark of something that was impossible to describe. It was a happy, lucky accident, finding some kindred part of yourself in a total stranger. pg. 287 ~ Elise Broach

Woe is me! how high art Thou in the highest, and how deep in the deepest! and Thou never departest, and we scarcely return to Thee. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

To make a movie, and we can call it a movie or we can call it a piece of art, to make a movie that has that much mass appeal what it is? What is it that makes kids in China want to see that movie [ 'Avatar'] and makes my dad want to see that movie. ~ Casey Neistat

The only damn thing I ever learned in all my years in art school was a piece is never done, it is just finished. You have to trust your inner voice, your instincts, when they tell you pencils down. And you roll up your sleeves and you start over again. ~ Brian Michael Bendis

And treating poetry as a performing art emphasizes its ephemerality. A printed poem can be endlessly reprinted, photocopied, scanned, uploaded, cut and pasted - but a performance, even if somebody's there with a video camera, is one time only: the audience experiences something that won't exist when the performance is over, and which won't ever be reproduced in exactly the same form. I find that appealing. ~ James Arthur

Its culture: the fruit of its life, the product of its own efforts in thought and art. This culture is not international. It is the expression of the national genius, of the blood. The culture is international in its brilliance but national in origin. Someone made a fine comparison: bread and wheat may be internationally consumed, but they always bear the imprint of the soil from which they came. ~ Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

A human body in no way resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk's bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare. But if you will contend that you were born to an inclination to such food as you have now a mind to eat, do you then yourself kill what you would eat. But do it yourself, without the help of a chopping-knife, mallet or axe, as wolves, bears, and lions do, who kill and eat at once. Rend an ox with thy teeth, worry a hog with thy mouth, tear a lamb or a hare in pieces, and fall on and eat it alive as they do. But if thou had rather stay until what thou eat is to become dead, and if thou art loath to force a soul out of its body, why then dost thou against nature eat an animate thing? There is nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing even as it is; so they boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate being thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare. ~ Plutarch

As Solomon himself had remarked, 'We can be sure of talent, we can only pray for genius.' But it was a reasonable hope that in such concentrated society some interesting reactions would take place.
Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests. So far, the conflict had produced worthwhile results in sculpture, music, literary criticism and film making. It was still too early to see if the group working on historical research would fulfil the hopes of its instigators, who were frankly hoping to restore mankind's pride in its own achievements.
Painting still languished which supported the views of those who considered that static, two dimensional forms of art had no further possibilities. It was noticeable, though a satisfactory explanation for this had not yet been produced that time played an essential part in the colony's achievements. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul. ~ Maxim Gorky

I don't pay attention to the world. I just have the art I like and the music I like and for me that's the whole world ~ John Frusciante

I went to Berlin for a year and a half, and that's where I learned about culture and art and everything. Before that, I lived in total absence of culture. I come from a house where there was nothing like reading or art. ~ Lea Seydoux

For years we practice meditation, like any art, and we get better at it each day. In the beginning it's just enough for us to sit down and focus our attention. ~ Frederick Lenz

The most work he did on [the urinals] was to run a brush once or twice apiece, singing some song as loud as he could in time to the swishing brush; then he'd splash in some Clorox and he'd be through ... And when the Big Nurse ... came in to check McMurphy's cleaning assignment personally, she brought a little compact mirror and she held it under the rim of the bowls. She walked along shaking her head and saying, "Why, this is an outrage ... an outrage ... " at every bowl. McMurphy sidled right along beside her, winking down his nose and saying in answer, "No; that's a toilet bowl ... a TOILET bowl. ~ Ken Kesey

Man's naked form belongs to no particular moment in history; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages. ~ Auguste Rodin

Conventions are convenient. It is inconvenient to say people are dead when they are alive, or alive when they have been buried, or that the world is crumbling when it is, as everyone can see, there as usual. If all A that does not fit B is ipso facto disqualified, we have to tailor A to shape and size to avoid serious trouble, and not all are equally gifted in this art. ~ R.D. Laing

Learn not only the rules of art, but 'when' and 'how' to break them. ~ Robert Warren

People shouldn't trust artists and they shouldn't trust art. Part of the fun of art is that it invites you to interpret it. ~ Tony Kushner

Great art is more than a transient refreshment. It is something which adds to the permanent richness of the soul's self-attainment. It justifies itself both by its immediate enjoyment, and also by its discipline of the inmost being. Its discipline is not distinct from enjoyment but by reason of it. It transforms the soul into the permanent realization of values extending beyond its former self. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

It's easier and sociabler to talk technique than it is to make art. ~ John Barth

Sanity in a writer is merely this: However stupid he may be in his private life, he never cheats in his writing. He never forgets that his audience is, at least ideally, as noble, generous, and tolerant as he is himself (or more so), and never forgets that he is writing about people, so that to turn characters to cartoons, or treat his characters as innately inferior to himself, to forget their reasons for being as they are, to treat them as brutes, is bad art. Sanity in a writer also involves taste . . . To write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write with the assumption that one out of a hundred people who read one's work may be dying, or have loved someone dying; to write so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs; to write, as Shakespeare wrote, so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain, and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged to live on . . . If there is good to be said, the writer should remember to say it. If there is bad to be said, he should say it in a way that reflects the truth that, though we see the evil, we choose to continue among the living. ~ John Gardner

The arts are encroaching one upon another, and from a proper use of this encroachment will rise the art that is truly monumental. ~ Wassily Kandinsky

Design came into being in 1919, when Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus at Weimar. Part of the prospectus of this school reads:
'The function of art has in the past been given a formal importance which has severed it from our daily life; but art is always present when a people lives sincerely and health.
'Thus our job is to invest a new system of education that may lead to a complete knowledge of human needs and a universal awareness of them.'
[...]
What Gropius wrote is still valid. Tis first school of design did tend to make a new kind of artist, an artist useful to society because he helps society to recover its balance, and not to lurch between a false world to live one's material life in and and ideal world to take moral revenge in. ~ Bruno Munari

Without looking up to God, sinking leads to drowning. But when my eyes are locked on his, sinking tells a different story.
Drop the hands and let the knees be weak. Loosen the grip and let the arms open wide. Bow the head and let the eyes close tight. We cannot do this life. We cannot parent these children. We cannot lead this company. We cannot change this world. We cannot make this art.
Not alone. Not on our own. Not without sinking first.
In the act of sinking into God, of looking up at him from the depths of our own inadequacy, we begin to know who he is. In turn, we know who we are as well. ~ Emily P. Freeman

But music doesn't sum up my approach to literature - even in Vain Art of the Fugue. To 'fugue' I had to invent 'trap-words,' or words that would force the narrator to turn around and start his path anew. ~ Dumitru Tepeneag

Everybody has their own America, and then they have pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can't see ... So the fantasy corners of America ... you've pieced them together from scenes in movies and music and lines from books. And you live in your dream America that you've custom-made from art and schmaltz and emotions just as much as you live in your real one. ~ Andy Warhol

All of us are not always smarter than one of us, leaders need to distinguish between the wisdom of crowds and the madness of crowds. ~ Paul Gibbons

You're trying to be charming again," Shelby muttered.
"Am I succeeding?"
Some questions were best ignored. "I really don't know how to be more succinct, Alan."
Was that part of the appeal? he wondered. The fact that the free-spirited Gypsy could turn into the regal duchess in the blink of an eye. He doubted she had any notion she was as much one as the other. "You have a wonderful speaking voice.What time will you be ready?"
Shelby huffed and frowned and considered. "If I agree to spend some time with you today, will you stop sending me things?"
Alan was silent for a long moment. "Are you going to take a politician's word?"
Now she had to laugh. "All right, you've boxed me in on that one."
"It's a beautiful day, Shelby.I haven't had a free Saturday in over a month. Come out with me."
She twined the phone cord around her finger. A refusal seemed so petty, so bad-natured.He was really asking her for very little, and-dammit-she wanted to see him. "All right, Alan, every rule needs to be bent a bit now and again to prove it's really a rule after all."
"If you say so.Where would you like to go? There's an exhibition of Flemish art at the National Gallery."
Shelby's lips curved. "The zoo," she said and waited for his reaction.
"Fine," Alan agreed without missing a beat. "I'll be there in ten minutes."
With a sigh,Shelby decided he just wasn't an easy man to shake. "Alan, I'm not dressed."
"I'll be there in five."
Nora Roberts

Art is an attitude toward life. If you aim your work and your life high, keep your scene harmonious, then you're an artist and your life is art. ~ Gage Taylor

Eyeing the traffic circulating the lobby hung with bad art. Big invasive stuff unloaded on Stanley Bard in exchange for rent. The hotel is an energetic, desperate haven for scores of gifted hustling children from every rung of the ladder. Guitar bums and stoned-out beauties in Victorian dresses. Junkie poets, playwrights, broke-down filmmakers, and French actors. Everybody passing through here is somebody, if not in the outside world. ~ Patti Smith

Gipsies, who every ill can cure,
Except the ill of being poor
Who charms 'gainst love and agues sell,
Who can in hen-roost set a spell,
Prepar'd by arts, to them best known
To catch all feet except their own,
Who, as to fortune, can unlock it,
As easily as pick a pocket. ~ Charles Churchill

What 'War and Peace' is to the novel and 'Hamlet' is to the theater, Swan Lake' is to ballet - that is, the name which to many people stands for and sums up an art form. ~ Robert Gottlieb