James Arthur Quotes

What is true of ballet is no less true of the other lively arts. Change is built into their natures. You watch a performance, and then... it's gone.

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

The perfection in theater is that it's over the second it's done.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting.

Everything vanishes, falls apart, doesn't it? Nature is always the same but nothing in her that appears to us lasts. Our art must render the thrill of her permanence, along with her elements, the appearance of all her changes. It must give us a taste of her Eternity.

The ephemeral nature of live performance is the part I love most - it's a monk's sand painting, carefully constructed, then wiped away in an instant.

What I love about theatre is that it disappears as it happens.

Theatre is the art form of the present: it exists only in the present, and then it's gone.

Acting is a general thing; it's not like being a primary artist like a painter or writer which stands the test of time. I don't think acting stands the test of time, but it can capture the mood of the moment, which is in itself very exciting, but it rarely lasts.

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 love theater. You can't replicate the live format.

Life doesn't last; art doesn't last. It doesn't matter.

Beauty plus pity-that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.

Theater is so wonderful and brilliant but it lasts very much in the moment. It's there and then it's gone.

As for me, I am a watercolor. I wash off.

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

Theatre is alive and it is now, and then it's gone.

In life beauty perishes, but not in art.

Theatre takes place all the time - wherever one is - and art simply facilitates persuading one this is the case.

We can see the film stars of yesterday in yesterday’s films, hear the voices of poest and singers on a record, keep the plays of dead dramatists upon our bookshelves, but the actor who holds his audience captive for one brief moment upon a lighted stage vanishes forever when the curtain falls.

A sketch will not serve more than one state of mind & will not serve to drink at again & again — in a sketch there is nothing but the one state of mind — that which you were in at the time.

I started writing plays, but the fact that plays don't last forever was too much for me to bear.

There is nothing that one can say about acting, writing, producing or directing that cannot be revoked in the next breath. Nothing is immutable. The logic of one year is a folly of the next.

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, "And this too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!

I was sand, I was snow—written on, rewritten, smoothed over.