Art Quotes

"In the face of overwhelming violence, art is our only defense."

"Art should challenge the status quo, not merely reflect it."

"Cinema is the only art form that can manipulate time and space so effortlessly."

"Music transcends language. Music connects people."

"The beauty of music is that it belongs to everyone and no one at the same time."

"My life is a canvas, and music is the only color I know how to paint with."

"Vulnerability in art is the only way to truly connect with another human being."

"Music is my way of making sense of a world that often makes no sense."

"Jimi Hendrix's music was escapism."

"I've always loved music. I listen to music the way a lot of actors watch movies."

"Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible."

"I don't get many hecklers now but answering them is an art form in itself."

"It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."

"All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."

"Great music is in the ear of the beholder."

"Since music has never had a Rembrandt, we have remained nothing more than musicians."

"The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has."

"The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness."

"As soon as I can afford a studio space, I'll paint again."

"I have always thought of music as a highway with many lanes."

"Music has always been a part of me and art in general. I love visual art as well."

"There's something fascinating about watching artists draw."

"I love people where, at the end of the day, they'll pick up a paintbrush and paint clouds. They can physically make things."

"Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them."

"There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun."

"Like most sensible people, you probably lost interest in modern art about the time that Julian Schnabel was painting broken pieces of the crockery that his wife had thrown at him for painting broken pieces of crockery instead of painting the bathroom and hall."

"We may live without poetry, music and art; We may live without conscience, and live without heart; We may live without friends; we may live without books; But civilized man cannot live without cooks."

"All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril."

"Glory is a heavy burden, a murdering poison, and to bear it is an art. And to have that art is rare."

"I'd like to consider myself a versatile skater and I like to skate to different kinds of music."

"O Duty, Why hast thou not the visage of a sweetie or a cutie? Why glitter thy spectacles so ominously? Why art thou clad so abominously?"

"With every song that I write, I compare it to the Beatles. The thing is, they only got there before me. If I'd been born at the same time as John Lennon, I'd have been up there."

"If everyone in the music business were brutally honest about what their intentions were then you could sort things out, but it's all smoke and mirrors."

"Picasso said, 'Art is a lie that tells the truth.' What if you just want to tell the truth and not lie about it?"

"People are looking for something new at the end of the day, and I think when people can do something new and unique to get people's attention, that's what is needed. There's so many people that follow the trend, and then it gets to a point where it gets a little stale. So, in music, I mean, whoever's the new trendsetter, that's who people follow."

"I hadn't played any music since freshman year of college, more than thirty years ago, so I had to relearn everything. I started writing songs. Some were dance and trance songs (I listen to them a lot while I'm writing), and some were love songs, because that after all is what music is about - dancing and trancing and love and love's setbacks."

"For my 23rd birthday, I received a nylon string guitar. I told myself that if I could play Eric Clapton's 'Tears In Heaven,' then I could play the guitar. I practised every chance I got, driving my housemates insane, until several weeks later I had a shaky version of the song down. I wrote my first song on the guitar a few weeks after that."

"I know my music probably isn't going to matter to the public after I die, but that doesn't mean I don't have something to offer."

"No matter what as an artist that's always what you want to do, you want to connect to the audience, you want to be able to send whatever message it is that you're singing about, you want to be able to convey that - and not make them feel - you want them to feel it, you want them to feel what you feel."

"I don't want to be a Michael Moore-style artist, which is not to disparage Michael Moore. But he seems rather unsuccessful at winning people over who don't already agree with him."

"I don't know - the idea of a specific wine paired with a specific piece of music seems a little far-fetched to me. But maybe I just need to be opened to it."

"Every human is an artist. And this is the main art that we have: the creation of our story."

"The greatest artist has no conception which a single block of white marble does not potentially contain within its mass, but only a hand obedient to the mind can penetrate to this image."

"When I was in art college, I would be painting, and I would create something on a canvas that was actually quite attractive. But if I got frightened and tried to protect that, that canvas would die."

"It sounds like something from a Woody Guthrie song, but it's true; I was raised in a freight car."

"I enjoy the videos with the sound off, where you can look at the belly buttons and everything. Really some pretty girls, but I don't know about the music."

"The only thing that I miss lately in all music is somebody that will put out a melody that you can whistle. It doesn't seem like there's anything happening like that."

"Let's say music is needed for only 43 seconds of film. You have to score it so it is an entity, so it won't bother anyone when it ends so quickly. Or if a song runs 2 minutes and 45 seconds, but the titles run a minute longer, you have to arrange that song so it doesn't get repetitious."

"The idea of celebrity has always been very strange to me because it's taking the focus away from the music and attaching it to a person. When we put someone on a pedestal or idolize them, we're giving our own power away."