Albert Camus Quotes

A discerning eye needs only a hint, and understatement leaves the imagination free to build its own elaborations.

In painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter your manner.

Any play that's making a point is less interesting than something that stays with you and suggests something further.

Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.

What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.

When you are trying to express things with metaphors and much more subtlety, that's when you are doing yourself a disservice by making a video.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

The thing I don't want to do as a film composer is reiterate. I prefer to subtextualize or to underline rather than to say, 'This is what you should be feeling.'

I don't want a performance to give me everything. You can look at Charlotte Rampling in '45 Years,' and you don't really know what she's thinking, but you know something interesting is happening.

A good painting is a lot like a good joke: you need to know when to stop, too many 'punchlines and you will have gone too far.

When you are describing, A shape, or sound, or tint; Don't state the matter plainly, But put it in a hint; And learn to look at all things, With a sort of mental squint.

In short stories it is better to say not enough than to say too much, because, because--I don't know why.

Art is not there simply to be understood. ... It is more the sense of an indication or suggestion.

I don't want to lose too much of the mystery by hammering every detail to death.

You must put the essence of what you want to say into a painting. The rest is arbitrary. Chosen with discernment, but chosen, and choice involves elimination.

The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in.

And isn't it better really to leave things only hinted at?

One can do such lovely things with so little. Subjects that are too beautiful end by appearing theatrical.

I do think that it's always okay to show too little. People will still be interested. So why show too much?

I had to learn that a good actor, like an iceberg, reveals only a small part of his ability on the surface. You suggest; you don't serve on a platter. You hold back. You don't expose it all to view. That's the way to put the audience's imagination to work.

If one draws things in a manner which provides only the barest clue to their meaning, the viewer is forced to fill in the gaps by using his own imagination. He is compelled to participate in the creative act, which I consider very important.

the inferred is always more effective than the obvious.

He found himself weeping. Not for the future or for the emperor. These were the tears of a man who saw before himself a masterpiece. True art was more than beauty; it was more than technique. It was not just imitation. It was boldness, it was contrast, it was subtlety.

The artist who uses the least of what is called imagination will be the greatest.

To explain away the mystery of a great painting - if such a feat were possible - would do irreparable harm... If there is no mystery, then there is no poetry, the quality I value above all else in art.