Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

Art is an end in itself; its values are intrinsic.

You can't just take an image and randomly distort it and call it art - although many people in La Jolla where I come from do precisely that.

As soon as any art is pursued with a view of money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work.

Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is great matter.

Is it the obligation of great art to be continually interesting? I think not.

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden. It is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.

Art can be very political but that can't be the purpose of art, it can't be the driving force. It isn't with any of the books that I love, anyway.

The most useful thing about art is it's uselessness.

The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.

A work of art rests its merits in traditional qualities. It may constitute a remarkable feat in craftsmanship; it may be a searching study of psychological states; it may be a nostalgic glance backward; it may be any one of an infinite number of concepts, none of which may have any possible bearing upon its degree of newness.

Not all art is great; most of it's rubbish.

I realize that every picture isn't a work of art.

I know that the arts are important. I'm not denying that, but I can't associate myself with all the claptrap that goes on around it.

The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique.

Now, there are so many movies, so many festivals, and so many awards going on, each judged with each other, like your work is worse than others and that's not fair. How can you tell what's best and what's worst from these awards? We're talking about art.

There is probably nothing wrong with art for art's sake if we take the phrase seriously, and not take it to mean the kind of poetry written in England forty years ago.

We all agree now - by 'we' I mean intelligent people under sixty - that a work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are beautiful in themselves.

I am not a commercial industry creator. I don't believe in making art to make money.

I'd rather have people really be able to step back and get their money's worth and look at me as a true artist than somebody who is just regurgitating other material.

If your choice enters into it, then taste is involved - bad taste, good taste, uninteresting taste. Taste is the enemy of art, A-R-T.

There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.

There's a great difference between being popular and being an artist.

All art is quite useless.

What makes art in general, and literature in particular, remarkable, what distinguishes them from life, is precisely that they abhor repetition. In everyday life, you can tell the same joke thrice and, thrice getting a laugh, become the life of the party. In art, though, this sort of conduct is called 'cliche.'