Duane Michals Quotes

If you want someone’s attention, whisper.

Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art.

It's just poetry, beauty and love. How hard can that be to act?

I think great art comes from being open and creative with somebody, and of course, if feelings start getting involved in that, it can either make things fantastic or really messy.

It's such a thrill in a relationship to be able to collaborate creatively. It's very romantic, and I like it.

Through sharing my pain, I can possibly heal your pain. There is no other feeling like it. Money doesn't compare. This is the true meaning of art.

His voice was as intimate as the rustle of sheets.

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

Nathan, how can you stand playing the same piece over and over again?" And Grandpa Nate answered, "Why don't you ask me how I can stand making love to the same woman over and over again?

Paint with joy - with the same joy that you would make love to a woman.

We live in a culture where the one who shouts the loudest gets the most attention. It's not in the vulgar, it's not in the shock that one finds art. And it's not the excessively beautiful. It's in between; it's in nuance.

Music gets us in touch with our emotions in a way that's more intimate than any other art form.

This is what I think art is and what I demand of it: that it pull everyone in, that it show one person another's most intimate thoughts and feelings, that it throw open the window of the soul.

nothing she did or said was quite what she meant but still her life could be called a monument shaped in a slant of available light and set to the movement of possible music

It is art to conceal art. -Ars est celare artem

Art is not only the desire to tell one's secret; it is the desire to tell it and hide it at the same time.

The most potent elements in a work of art are, often, its silences.

The trouble with you is that the only way you can communicate is through art. You’ve never learned to communicate your feelings to a man. You don’t even want to communicate in a relationship. You think that if you open up to love, you’ll lose your independence or your self-expression or creativity or whatever you call all that passionate, wonderful stuff that makes you feel alive inside.

In love-making, as in other arts, those who do it best cannot tell how it is done.

How much more sensuality invites to art than does sentimentality.

People think photography is about photographing. To me, it’s about relationships.

Thought must be hidden in the verse like nutritional virtue in a fruit.

To see the butcher slap the steak before he laid it on the block, and give his knife a sharpening, was to forget breakfast instantly. It was agreeable too - it really was - to see him cut it off so smooth and juicy. There was nothing savage in the act, although the knife was large and keen; it was a piece of art, high art; there was delicacy of touch, clearness of tone, skilful handling of the subject, fine shading. It was the triumph of mind over matter; quite.

In so many areas, when you think about it, you never really see an actor cross over to music. It always music to acting and it's receivable because when music gives a form of entertainment of art to where it's very personable, it's a passion, it's an intimate type of art to when you hear it, it's them.

Painting as it is now promises to become more subtle - more like music and less like sculpture - and above all it promises color. If only it keeps this promise.