John Constable Quotes

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.

For me, food and music are very similar in that you create, you spend a lot of time making something, and it only lasts a few seconds or a few minutes.

I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'.

Creators, makers of the new, can never become obsolete, for in the arts there is no correct answer. The story of discoverers could be told in simple chronological order, since the latest science replaces what went before. But the arts are another story- a story of infinite addition. We must find order in the random flexings of the imagination.

I always wanted to show the world that art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting.

Art is mind and heart and touch as much and more than it is mere instrument, technique - without which however it cannot exist at all.

Art, I suppose, is only for beginners, who have made up in their minds to be content with symbols rather than with what they signify, with the elegantly composed recipe in lieu of actual dinner.

Each artist comes to the painting or sculpture because there he can be told that he, the individual, transcends all classes and flouts all predictions. In the work of art, he finds his uniqueness confirmed.

Art is foremost a state of mind, and only secondarily a problem of form.

What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

Now painting is different. It's something recollected in tranquility.

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

We're all going about trying to make beauty in the world and trying to make order out of chaos. And that's what art is.

I don't really picture anyone when I'm drawing. They just become their own completed person with googly eyes.

Theatre can't be done again and again and again and again - it's organic.

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.

I view art as an inspirational tool.

The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.

The primary thing writing and basketball share is the sense that each time you go out, each time you play or begin a piece, it's a new day. You can score 40 points one game, but the next game, those points don't count. You can win the Nobel Literature Prize, but that doesn't make the next sentence of the next book appear.

I paint flowers so they will not die.

Life and art are inseparable.

Art brings to life things that can seemingly be dead, and can put a fresh perspective on things that are living. It's so important we keep creating.