Raymond Carver Quotes

While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.

The magic question is, 'What for?' But art is not for anything. Art is the ultimate goal.

Art for art's sake, and creation for creation's sake, and love for love's sake

Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.

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.

The end-purpose of all art is enjoyment!

I don't believe that artists really are interested in money. That's not the motivation for art.

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.

All real works of art look as though they were done in joy.

The art of music is good, for the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselves good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as a mean, the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly understood by proof.

The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work.

Art needs no spur beyond itself.

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

Art for art's sake is dead, if it ever lived.

A work of art, so far as it is a work of art, cannot - whatever the artist's personal intention - advocate anything at all.

Art is a concrete and personal and rather childish thing after all - no matter what people do to graft it into science and make it sociological and psychological; it is no good at all unless it is let alone to be itself - a game of make-believe, or re-production, very exciting and delightful to people who have an ear for it or an eye for it.

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.

In a sense, the first (if not necessarily the prime) function of a novelist, of ANY artist, is to entertain. If the poem, painting, play or novel does not immediately engage one's surface interest then it has failed. Whatever else it may or may not be, art is also entertainment. Bad art fails to entertain. Good art does something in addition.

The true test of all the arts is not solely whether the production is a true copy of nature, but whether it answers the end of art, which is to produce a pleasing effect upon the mind.

Art to be art must soothe.

A work of art doesn't have to be explained.

With writing and publishing, my only aim is to live in the aesthetic pleasure dome.

The purpose of all art is to cause a deep and emotion, also one that is entertaining or pleasing. Out of the depth and entertainment comes value.

But then people don't read literature in order to understand; they read it because they want to re-live the feelings and sensations which they found exciting in the past. Art can be a lot of things; but in actual practice, most of it is merely the mental equivalent of alcohol and cantharides.