W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

Art is a severe business; most serious when employed in grand and sacred objects. The artist stands higher than art, higher than the object. He uses art for his purposes, and deals with the object after his own fashion.

To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.

When you give an artist a canvas, you shouldn't tell him exactly how much paint to put on it, or exactly how sharp the images should be. You should let the artist get going.

As an artist, I want to interpret my feelings

Just give us 50 years where we're the only ones who are allowed to profit from art, and then you can do whoever you want. In fact, I'll buy you the paint. Whatever you want. Just give us 50 years. 50 years. That's it.

Nothing in art should seem accidental, not even movement

Art is vice. One does not wed it, one rapes it.

The creative writer uses his life as well as being its victim; he can control, in his work, the self-presentation that in actuality is at the mercy of a thousand accidents.

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

There are so many things in the world - in the cities - so much to see. Does art need to represent this variety and contribute to its proliferation? Can art be that free? The difficulties begin when you understand what it is that the soul will not permit the hand to make.

In every human being there is the artist, and whatever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to express the result of his growth and his contact with life. I don't believe any real artist cares whether what he does is 'art' or not. Who, after all, knows what art is?

The artist is the lover of nature; therefore he is her slave and her master.

The purpose of art is to re-present nature, not represent it.

Those who are concerned with the arts are often asked questions, not always sympathetic ones, about the use or value of what they are doing. It is probably impossible to answer such questions directly, or at any rate to answer the people who ask them.

Acting to me is a very organic art form and you just go and do it. And I like to direct the same way that I like to be directed. Let me bring in what I want to bring in, and if something's wrong, just tell me about it and I'll make some corrections or adjustments. And that's what I do.

I thought for a long time that within art, that you would come up with an idea, you would labor over it intensely until you felt like it was done, and then when you finished it, that was the final stage. I started to realize that that's not actually the completion of it. The final stage of any kind of art is to really lose control over it and let it affect other people. You can't control the effect that it has on people, but you hope that it has some sort of reaction. You just hope that they're not indifferent to it, you wanna make people feel something, whether it's love or hate.

You see, a document has use, whereas art is really useless. Therefore art is never a document, although it can adopt that style.

It's tough to make music and make it your own, and not have somebody call it something you don't agree with but can't control. Sometimes the press doesn't realize how much power they have and how they can shape somebody's life. I think there's a lot of people just trying to make music and get their art out there, and their heads get f**ked by the press calling them this or calling them that.

Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for any one but inspire them?

Art is an expression of joy and awe. It is not an attempt to share one's virtues and accomplishments with the audience, but an act of selfless spirit.

Leo Tolstoy said the purpose of art is to teach you to love life. And that's what I want.

You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.

I think it's possible to be free in a big production. It's the eye of the director and the actor and the story.

Art need no longer be an account of past sensations.

I have studied the art of the masters and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I have no more wanted to imitate the former than to copy the latter; nor have I thought of achieving the idle aim of art for art's sake.