Jasper Johns Quotes

I just love writing. It's magical, it's somewhere else to go, it's somewhere much more dreadful, somewhere much more exciting. Somewhere I feel I belong, possibly more than in the so-called real world.

The public has an appetite for anything about imagination - anything that is as far away from reality as is creatively possible.

Art is embedded in nature and they who can extract it, have it.

Do not copy nature. Art is an abstraction. Rather, bring your art forth by dreaming in front of her and think more of creation.

My whole art is based on escaping life and reality, which might not the best tendency to have when you're trying to be a good person in general. But people can escape into my world easily - artists are supposed to create a keyhole that people can look into.

From music and dance to painting and sculpting, the arts allow us to explore new worlds and to view life from another perspective. They also encourage individuals to sharpen their skills and to nurture their imagination and intellect.

Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes.

I have been doodling with ink and watercolor on paper all my life. It's my way of stirring up my imagination to see what I find hidden in my head. I call the results dream pictures, fantasy sketches, and even brain-sharpenin g exercises.

My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature.

[Great artists] do not copy what they see, but what they desire.

I am pretty sure that all young human beings have, at one time or another in their growing-up, been actors. They have used their imaginations to carry them away from painful or confusing situations... have imagined themselves to be more powerful or beautiful or brave or loving than they are.

To me, art begets art. Painting feeds the eye just as poetry feeds the ear, which is to say that both feed the soul.

When I was five, I think, that's when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn't like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.

Fantasy for me as a kid was real, and I had a fantasy about what life was, whether it was sort of wicked and dire, or wholly normal, or whatever. Anything really close to home is not, it seems to me, what a good book should be about.

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.

Kids need stuff which is different than what their life is that they can kind of live through.

From an early age, I had always loved drawing. Laying on the floor, in front of the fire, drawing from my imagination, marching soldiers, dive bombers, spaceships and monsters. Now, suddenly, I was drawing from real life!

The dream is to keep surprising yourself, never mind the audience.

Movies aren't just supposed to be a representation of reality. They're supposed to be an art.

I wasn't in the art world at all as a kid; I was just creative, and we were always doing arts and crafts.

I love to fantasize still, as I did as a little boy. If I see a movie, I want to fantasize about what it's all about.

I'm inspired by art - in whatever form it takes. I love when I see a painting or a photograph that captures my attention.

Whether it's a song or a television show, or a book or poem, art is the thing that cracks me open and encourages me to go on a deeper journey to find my own compassion and empathy and humanity.