Sometimes it is better not to talk about art by using the word ‘art.’ If we just act with awareness and integrity, our art will flower, and we don’t have to talk about it at all.
Art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.
Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.
If a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don’t think, ‘oh, I love this picture because it’s universal.’ ‘I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.’ That’s not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you.
One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.
Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.
Art is a person’s private vision expressed in aesthetic forms.
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
One thing about great art: it made you love people more, forgive them their petty transgressions. It worked in the way that religion was supposed to, if you thought about it.
The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.