Walter Pater Quotes

There is but one art, to omit! Oh, if I knew how to omit I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knows how to omit would make an Iliad of a daily paper.

There is but one art, to omit.

Art, it seems to me, should simplify.

Creativity has more to do with the elimination of the inessential than with inventing something new.

Art is the exclusion of the unnecessary.

Concision in art is a necessity and an elegance. The verbose painter bores: who will get rid of all these trimmings?

Writing is about a blank piece of paper and leaving out what’s not supposed to be there.

Art, it seems to me, should simplify finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole - so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader's consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page.

Art is about eliminating almost everything in order to focus on the thing that you need to talk about.

It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table.

The higher the artist, the fewer the gestures. The fewer the tools, the greater the imagination. The greater the will, the greater the secret failure.

You can't be minimalist as a director until you have acquired the experience and confidence to say no.

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.

The Japanese have a wonderful sense of design and a refinement in their art. They try to produce beautiful paintings with the minimum number of strokes.

It's not what you play but what you leave out that makes the difference.

Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing.

To be a novelist, all I need is a pen and a piece of paper.

I feel the need of attaining the maximum of intensity with the minimum of means. It is this which has led me to give my painting a character of even greater bareness.

Simplicity is natures first step, and the last of art.

I am an Indian and a painter, that's all.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

Simplicity is the glory of expression.

I cut up loads. I always want everything shorter, shorter, shorter.

You can create something strong in art with a few notes. It is like how Aboriginal drawings have a simplicity that is incredibly rich.

Writing is like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate, in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain