Arty Quotes

Later, at the sink in our van, Mama rinsed the blue stain and the odd spiders, caterpillars, and stems from the bucket.
"Not what we usually start with, but we can go again tomorrow. And this will set up nicely in about six, eight jars."
The berries were beginning to simmer in the big pot on the back burner. Mama pushed her dark wooden spoon into the foaming berries and cicrcled the wall of the pot slowly.
I leaned my hot arms on the table and said, "Iphy better not go tomorrow. She got tired today." I was smelling the berries and Mamaa's sweat, and watching the flex of the blue veins behind her knees.
"Does them good. The twins always loved picking berries, even more than eating them. Though Elly likes her jam."
"Elly doesn't like anything anymore."
The knees stiffened and I looked up. The spoon was motionless. Mama stared at the pot.
"Mama, Elly isn't there anymore. Iphy's changed. Everything's changed. This whole berry business, cooking big meals that nobody comes for, birthday cakes for Arty. It's dumb, Mama. Stop pretending. There isn't any family anymore, Mama."
Then she cracked me with the big spoon. It smacked wet and hard across my ear, and the purple-black juice spayed across the table. She started at me, terrified, her mouth and eyes gaping with fear. I stared gaping at her. I broke and ran.
I went to the generator truck and climbed up to sit by Grandpa. That's the only time Mama ever hit me and I knew I deserve ~ Katherine Dunn

I seem to have been able to make a career out of doing what I feel like doing, so why not keep doing it? What's corrupting is wanting to be more important. You want to be more arty - you get your identity from that. Or you get your identity out of making more money. ~ Jane Campion

We were these arty punks from Hollywood. I considered myself an intellectual. ~ Flea

Or should I have said that I wanted to die, not in the sense of wanting to throw myself off of that train bridge over there, but more like wanting to be asleep forever because there isn't any making up for killing women or even watching women get killed, or for that matter killing men and shooting them in the back and shooting them more times than necessary to actually kill them and it was like just trying to kill everything you saw sometimes because it felt like there was acid seeping down into your soul and then your soul is gone and knowing from being taught your whole life that there is no making up for what you are doing, you're taught that your whole life, but then even your mother is so happy and proud because you lined up your sign posts and made people crumple and they were not getting up ever and yeah they might have been trying to kill you too, so you say, What are you goona do?, but really it doesn't matter because by the end you failed at the one good thing you could have done, and the one person you promised would live is dead, and you have seen all things die in more manners than you'd like to recall and for a while the whole thing fucking ravaged your spirit like some deep-down shit, man, that you didn't even realize you had until only the animals made you sad, the husks of dogs filled with explosives and old arty shells and the fucking guts of everything stinking like metal and burning garbage and you walk around and the smell is deep down into you now and yo ~ Kevin Powers

When a beautiful blonde asks, you don't say no. ~ V.T. Davy

The one person who didn't seem enthusiastic about giving a speech in Berlin was Obama. When Favreau and I talked to him about it, he didn't offer much beyond suggesting we use Berlin's story to talk about what we were proposing in our own foreign policy. Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected a request from the campaign for the speech to take place at the Brandenburg Gate, where Reagan had called on Gorbachev to tear down the wall, saying that the venue should be reserved for an actual president. When he learned about this, Obama was embarrassed and annoyed. "I never said I wanted to give a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate," he snapped. It spoke to a larger dynamic in the campaign: While Obama was often blamed for the cult of personality growing up around him - arty posters, celebrity anthems, and lavish settings for his events - he was rarely responsible for it, and worried that we were raising expectations too high in a world that has a way of resisting change.

"Before he left for Afghanistan, he read a draft of the speech and told us he was satisfied with it - "You could put this speech on the teleprompter and I'd be fine," he said - but I was hoping for more than that. I was hoping for edits that would elevate the speech and make it more than a summation of our worldview. The shift to a foreign audience hadn't been hard, as Obama's message about working across races "and religions, his preference for diplomacy over war, his embrace of the science of climate c ~ Ben Rhodes

My family don't watch a lot of what I do. Films are a bit too arty-farty for them, certainly the ones I do! ~ Samantha Morton

She's so, everybody's so stupid, you know? Christian too, Todd, whoever says stupid things, you're from different worlds, like you dropped here in a spaceship."
I had to say something. "Yeah," I said. "So - ?"
"So they can fuck themselves," you said. "I don't care, you know?"
I felt a smile on my face, tears too.
"Because Min, I know, OK? I'm stupid I know, about faggy movies, sorry, fuck, I'm stupid about that too. No offense. Ha! But I want to do it, Min.
Any party you want, anything, not go to bonfires. Whatever you want to do, for the eighty-ninth birthday, even though I can't remember the name."
"Lottie Carson." I stepped close to you, but you held your hands out, you weren't done.
"And they'll say things, right? I know they will, of course they will. Your friends are, probably, too, right?"
"Yes," I said. I felt furious, or furiously something, pacing with you and waiting to fall into your moving arms.
"Yes," you said, with a huge grin. "Let's stay together, I want to be with you. Let's. Yes?"
"Yes."
"Because I don't care, virginity, different, arty, weird parties with bad cake, that igloo. Just together, Min."
"Yes."
"Like everyone is telling us not to be."
"Yes!"
"Because Min, listen, I love you."
I gaped.
"Don't, you don't have to - I know it's crazy, Joan says I've really lost it, but - "
"I love you too," I said. ~ Daniel Handler

Sometimes the independent movies can get a little too arty-farty. You watch the IFC Channel and you want to throw up. You don't always have to take things so serious, you know. ~ Mickey Rourke

Younger women are willing to go out with high status males. If you look at the kind of women Salman Rushdie attracts, they tend to be intelligent, arty types. For her, it's a kudos thing. The man just wants a good-looking girl because he imagines that when his friends see him, they'll all think, 'Gosh I wish I was him.' ~ Mark Barrowcliffe

Atheist Jews double crossers stole our [black people's] secrets ... They give us to worship a dead Jew and not ourselves ... Selling fried potatoes and people, the little arty bastards talking arithmetic they sucked from the arab's head. ~ Amiri Baraka

I'm an artist. I'm an artist and I'm going to make art! Art arty art art. ~ Andy Beirsack

What's with the serum?"
I don't know, but it sounds ominous. We better put a telepathic direction finder on Benway. The man's not to be trusted. Might do almost anything ... Turn a massacre into a sex orgy ... "
Or a joke."
Precisely. Arty type ... No principles ... ~ William S. Burroughs

Arty's growing flock, however, was different. I dreamed one night that Arty cried them into the world. They came out of his eyes as a green liquid that dripped to the ground making puddles. The puddles thickened and jelled into bodies that got up and hung around Arty.

But Dr. P. and the advance man and McGurk, and later Sanderson and the Bag Man and the nebbishes and the simps who mooned and crooned around him, were all there because of Arty, no matter what other pretext they might claim. They all belonged to him. ~ Katherine Dunn

Like, Mission Of Burma to me always sounded almost like they were part of the British Arty New Wave. I kind of like that. I like not being able to tell the difference. ~ Graham Coxon

And the truth is that I'm not, Ed, is what I wanted to tell you. I'm not arty like everyone says who doesn't know me, I don't paint, I can't draw, I play no instrument, I can't sing. I'm not in plays, I wanted to say, I don't write poems. I can't dance except tipsy at dances. I'm not athletic, I'm not a goth or a cheerleader, I'm not treasurer or co-captain. I'm not gay and out and proud, I'm not that kid from Sri Lanka, not a triplet, a prep, a drunk, a genius, a hippie, a Christian, a slut, not even one of those super-Jewish girls with a yarmulke gang wishing everyone a happy Sukkoth. I'm not anything, this is what I realized ... I like movies, everyone knows I do
I love them
but I will never be in charge of one because my ideas are stupid and wrong in my head. There's nothing different about that, nothing fascinating, interesting, worth looking at. ~ Daniel Handler

The religious and economic alliance represented in the Tea {arty remains misunderstood and out of the public eye. The Tea Party movement was formed primarily as an antitax movement, and that limiting government spending and reducing taxes, drawing on the symbols of the Boston Tea Party. As important as these initial catalysts were, the power for the movement came from its adoption of white evangelical conservatives. ~ Gerardo Marti

Then the real fear began. With the baby outside me and vulnerable, I suddenly saw the world as hostile and dangerous. Anything, including my own ignorance, could hurt her, kill her, snatch her from me. I wanted to cram her back inside where she'd be safe. I was too weak to protect her. I needed the family. Arty had to care about her. Iphy had to help me. Papa had to be sober and brave, and Mama had to lay off the pills and be wise. But there was really only Chick, and I was terrified whenever he was out of sight. I scared him with my clinging but couldn't trust the baby to anyone else. ~ Katherine Dunn

He had Oly letter a little card that he taped on his wall. The thing read, 'The only liars bigger than the quack are the quack's patients.' Arty used to just keep me in stitches. Eleven years old he was then. ~ Katherine Dunn

We don't just have equipment to set up, we have a whole stage set: TVs tuned to static, a busted old Moog synthesizer (also tuned to static - it basically just sits onstage, drooling, like a demented robot friend), an ironing board we use as a percussion stand, lamps (because we prefer mood lighting to rock-show lighting), various car parts and kitchen utensils (for hitting), a movie screen we project slides onto and a pair of mannequin legs in a gold lamé miniskirt with a TV for a torso. All this may sound arty, but really, it's just overenthusiastic. ~ Kristin Hersh

I was always a bit arty-farty as a boy. 'Come on, Mr. Arty-Farty,' my sister used to say to me. ~ Nicolas Roeg

I got a random tattoo the other day. It's a red triangle, which makes everyone think I'm arty, which I'm not. I used to draw red triangles all the time. It must mean something - maybe I don't know it yet. But I'll figure it out. ~ Ellie Goulding

I was becoming weird, I knew. And it didn't seem like the good kind of weird, like the eccentric arty weird that could be appreciated by other people. It seemed like the bad, dark kind that could unravel a person if it got out of hand. ~ Chelsea Martin

When I was in the middle of the 'Scott Pilgrim' series, and it was slowly becoming more popular, though still not financially solvent, I had this real bratty instinct to turn around and do something super arty and dark. I felt dismissed by comics culture, stuck in between the artcomix world and the nerdcomix world, and I was cranky about it. ~ Bryan Lee O'Malley

But I do nothing that I don't like, such as "inventing" up to the arty or "down" to the corny. I happen to relish a certain type of corn. What I think is the really dangerous approach is the "let's be artistic" attitude. I know that artistry just happens. ~ Fred Astaire

Introduction to bits. Things are going up on the curb, every few months. Maybe. Bottle of the inside of the lines of the landing, not as we can set of brightness. But the houses get repayed, man. Anywhere. There's nowhere else to be late at a number of me? But it's visible from the house. It's early evening, but it crackles and perhaps they own. It means that perhaps the result of bubbly waiting for a few moments. I have to flinch at the forthcoming disaster strikes. Nathan: He travels. While most of the hoarded seconds of the moon given flesh. Inanna is that they own. That which does the theme afterwards. They become bitter. Not a level on a few moments I see. Thank you. Yeah. Arty stuff. ~ Neil Gaiman

I don't care. He'll only be painting his own feelings for me, and I don't mind if he does that. I wouldn't have him touch me, not for anything. But if he thinks he can do anything with his owlish arty staring, let him stare. He can make as many empty tubes and corrugations out of me as he likes. It's his funeral. He hated you for what you said: that his tubified art is sentimental and self-important. But of course it's true. ~ D.H. Lawrence

I've spent half my life on planes. I have a lot of love for New Zealand, though. That is where the really arty, whimsical side of the family resided - in Hobbitland. ~ Alice Englert

I wonder, for example, if the twins' piano training had given them the Tomaini brand of dexterity with hand jobs? Could a non-musician learn it? Could I?

Children stumble through these most critical acts with no real help from the elders who are so anxious to teach them everything else. We were given rules and taboos for the toilet, the sneeze, the eating of an artichoke. Papa taught us all a particular brush stroke for cleaning our teeth, a special angle for the pen in our hand, the exact words for greeting elders, with fine-tuned distinctions for male, female, show folk, customers, or tradesmen. The twins and Arty were taught to design an act, whether it lasted three minutes or thirty, to tease, coax, and startle a crowd, to build to crescendo and then disappear in the instant of climax. From what I have come to understand of life, this show skill, this talk-'em, sock-'em, knock-'em-flat information, is as close as we got to that ultimate mystery. I throw death aside. Death is not mysterious. We all understand death far too well and spend chunks of life resisting, ignoring, or explaining away that knowledge.

But this real mystery I have never touched, never scratched. I've seen the tigers with their jaws wide, their fangs buried in each other's throats, and their shadowed hides sizzling, tip to tip. I've seen the young norms tangled and gasping in the shadows between booths. I suspect that, even if I had begun as a norm, the saw-toothed yearning that w ~ Katherine Dunn

I know what dissipate means, Arty. I'm not three, for heaven's sake. ~ Eoin Colfer

Take down Arty and Chick and Papa and the twins, and all that's left of the Jar Kin, and, by then, Lily and me. Open our metal jars and pour all the Binewski dust together into that big battered loving cup that first held only Grandpa B. Bolt us to the hood of your traveling machine and take us on the road again. ~ Katherine Dunn

Don't hate me forever, Arty," whispered Holly. "I couldn't bear that. ~ Eoin Colfer

I'm sorry, Arty,' she whispered into his ear.
'Sorry for what?'
'For everything. For the last few months, I haven't been myself. But things are going to change. Time to stop living in the past.'
Artemis felt a tear on his cheek. He wasn't sure whose tear it was. ~ Eoin Colfer

Dear daughter, I won't try to call my feeling for Arty love. Call it focus. My focus on Art was an ailment, noncommunicable, and, even to me all these years later, incomprehensible. Now I despise myself. But even so I remember, in hot floods, the way he slept, still as death, with his face washed flat, stony as a carved tomb and exquisite. His weakness and his ravening bitter needs were terrible, and beautiful, and irresistible as an earthquake. He scalded or smothered anyone he needed, but his needing and the hurt that it caused me were the most life I ever had. Remember what a poor thing I have always been and forgive me.

He saw no use for you and you interfered with his use of me. I sent you away to please him, to prove my dedication to him, and to prevent him from killing you...

My job was to come back [from the convent] directly, with nothing leaking from beneath my dark glasses, to give Arty his rubdown and then paint him for the next show, nodding cheerfully all the while, never showing anything but attentive care for his muscular wonderfulness. Because he could have killed you. He could have cut off the money that schooled and fed you. He could have erased you so entirely that I never would have had those letters and report cards and photos, or your crayon pictures, or the chance to spy on you, and to love you secretly when everything else was gone. ~ Katherine Dunn

Arty. To me the word's got as much venom associated with it as 'wacky'. ~ Alex Kapranos

My studio is not arty. It doesn't smell of turpentine, and I'm not knee-high in paper. ~ Robert Ingpen

Mr youse needn't be so spry concernin questions arty each has his tastes but as for i i likes a certain party gimme the he-man's solid bliss for youse ideas i'll match youse a pretty girl who naked is is worth a million statues ~ E. E. Cummings

The reason I did fashion was it was the only way to get paid to do anything creative. You couldn't support yourself as an 'artist' - I hate that word. The only way you could be 'arty' was as a fashion photographer, because it still had a certain amount of integrity involved. ~ David Bailey

It's total bullshit. I hate it when people make sadness all deep and beautiful and, like- profound. That's the word it's not profound. It's not beautiful. It sucks. It sucks balls. I think it makes non-sad people feel better. Like, they think if must be a good thing to be sad, because you're getting all this insight into real life and pain or whatever. Like how people say tears are like rain. Fuck off. Tears are just tears and they make your eyes hurt and they won stop when you want them to and ugh you get all those arty photos of girls crying - it's always girls, have you noticed?- and it's so beautiful and tasteful and moving. When the reality is your face goes all blotchy and your nose runs and you can taste it every time you breathe'
'Taste what?'
'It. Pain. Sadness. I'm just saying that sadness isn't beautiful and if it looks that way, it's a lie. ~ Sara Barnard

I suppose I just like being arty. That's all. Arty. ~ Peter Capaldi

New Rule #1 – Don't date women who paint. Arty-farty doesn't just equal freaky in the sack, it also equals nasty genius revenge. I don't like genius when it's happening to me. ~ Naomi Kramer

Artemis took a chance on some calculated sarcasm. "Really, Spiro. Did you think I would attempt a break-in? Perhaps you thought I would fly in here with my fairy friends and magic your box away?" Spiro laughed. "You can bring all the fairy friends you like, Arty-boy. Short of a miracle that Cube is staying right where it is. ~ Eoin Colfer

The only thing that shocks me is public interest in people who shouldn't be interesting at all, like Jade Goody. We've gone past Andy Warhol and all those clever, arty and witty things that were done and said in the sixties ... the fifteen minutes, and so on. Now your celebrities don't have to do anything, they're just voted in. And that shocks me. ~ Marco Pirroni

Arty farty, you'll never fool your Aunt, who knew you picked your nose and wet your pants. ~ Ray Davies

Identity is a bag and a gag. Yet it exists for me with all the force of a fatal disease. Obviously I am here, a mind and a body. To say there's no proof my body exists would be arty and specious and if my mind is more ephemeral, less provable, the solution of being a writer with solid (touchable, tearable, burnable) books is as close as anyone has come to a perfect answer. ~ Judith Perelman Rossner

History Eraser

I got drunk and fell asleep atop the sheets but luckily i left the heater on.
And in my dreams i wrote the best song that i've ever written...can't remember how it goes.
I stayed drunk and fell awake and i was cycling on a plane and far away i heard you say you liked me.
We drifted to a party -- cool. The people went to arty school. They made their paints by mixing acid wash and lemonade

In my brain I re-arrange the letters on the page to spell your name

I found an ezra pound and made a bet that if i found a cigarette i'd drop it all and marry you.
Just then a song comes on: "you can't always get what you want" -- the rolling stones, oh woe is we, the irony!
The stones became the moss and once all inhibitions lost, the hipsters made a mission to the farm.
We drove by tractor there, the yellow straw replaced our hair, we laced the dairy river with the cream of sweet vermouth.

In my brain I re-arrange the letters on the page to spell your name

You said "we only live once" so we touched a little tongue, and instantly i wanted to...
I lost my train of thought and jumped aboard the Epping as the doors were slowly closing on the world.
I touched on and off and rubbed my arm up against yours and still the inspector inspected me.
The lady in the roof was living proof that nothing really ever is exactly as it seems.

In my brain I re-arrange the letters on the p ~ Courtney Barnett

I feel more comfortable in a place like Brighton - a town, with one centre, one bus station, one train station. And there are so many arty, creative people, and things are less rushed, less stressed. ~ Gabrielle Aplin

I would really like to have had the guts and the energy and so on to be able to write about, you know, people having battles with the DHSS. But I ... I haven't. They're dull things. I mean, I'm an arty person. OK, I write overblown, purple, self-indulgent prose. So fucking what? ~ Angela Carter

I use my awards as doorstops. Others are in the office or in little cubbyholes in our library - they go between the books, because they actually look like arty pieces. ~ Helen McCrory

On, no. I hate those arty little places. I like dining in a hotel full of all sorts of people. Dining in a club means you're surrounded by people who're pretty much alike. Their membership in the club means they're there because they are all interested in gold, or because they're university graduates, or belong to the same political party or write, or paint, or have incomes of over fifty thousand a year, or something. I like 'em mixed up, higgledy-piggledy. A dining room full of gamblers, and insurance agents, and actors, and merchants, thieves, bootleggers, lawyers, kept ladies, wives, flaps, travelling men, millionaires  -  everything. That's what I call dining out. Unless one is dining at a friend's house, or course." A rarely long speech for her. ~ Edna Ferber

Right now you're all staring at me like you're shocked. Because I'm not as 'smart' as Jacy, or as 'arty' as Ali, or as 'cool-looking as Clarissa. You think I don't know anything-"
"That's not true," I say loyally.
Sonya waves it aside. "I'm not mad. I'm just saying, People look at me and think, 'boring fat chick.' They do, I know. But they don't realize I read Philosophy books and other hard stuff. Even your best friends might not know your deepest secrets. ~ Carol M. Tanzman

I enjoy getting to be arty and quirky and weird and all the things that I don't have that much choice with. You just sort of use what you got. ~ Paul Reubens

In the past, my aspirations were as arty as they could get, and I'm really embarrassed by it. ~ Michael Lehmann

People are afraid of you, Arty. Girls are terrified of you. You're a fifteen-year-old in a bespoke suit, and nobody died. ~ Eoin Colfer

There is something about dance that is actually a great tension. There is something that is incredibly freeing about dancing for dancers who do it. They tend to be really arty and interesting people in real life. At the same time, they have an incredibly rigorous training schedule. ~ George Nolfi

Mira Levenson. Aged twelve. Looks, long dark shiny hair, dark brown eyes (almost black), brown skin. Beautiful. Favorite colour, copper orange, I think. Personality, clever, bright, serious, shy, funny without realizing it, holds back her thoughts, mystery girl, arty. What I've noticed: she's stronger than she thinks she is; she doesn't speak much ay school. What I know: she's got a loud laugh (when she lets it out). Her best friend is Millie Lockhart. She doesn't need Millie as much as she thinks she does. Her grandmother is dying and she loves her. She started talking in Pat Print's class. I know she doesn't know how much I think of her, how much I miss her if she's not around. What I think she thinks about me is that I'm a bit of a joker, but I'm deadly serious.

Deer...apple...green...sea...
See you on Friday!
Love
Jidé ~ Sita Brahmachari

I wanted to combine science and photography in a sensible, unemotional way. Some people's ideas of scientific photography is just arty design, something pretty. That was not the idea. The idea was to interpret science sensibly, with good proportion, good balance and good lighting, so we could understand it. ~ Berenice Abbott

I think there is status to having a house full of pretty things, to buying expensive paintings of seashells from her arty friends and spoons from Tiffany's. ~ E. Lockhart

People scream at me, "Hey, let's party." I give off an I'm-crazy-and-I-want-to-arty-and-wrestle-you vibe. ~ Jack Black

I went to a boarding school when I was 13, and it was a very arty school, so there was an opportunity for a lot more. I joined a band and so on. We would do concerts at school, and I would play cover tunes and thought, 'This is really great.' ~ Teddy Thompson