Willa Cather Quotes

You can't be minimalist as a director until you have acquired the experience and confidence to say no.

Art is about eliminating almost everything in order to focus on the thing that you need to talk about.

All art does but consist in the removal of surplusage.

The higher the artist, the fewer the gestures. The fewer the tools, the greater the imagination. The greater the will, the greater the secret failure.

The Japanese have a wonderful sense of design and a refinement in their art. They try to produce beautiful paintings with the minimum number of strokes.

I feel the need of attaining the maximum of intensity with the minimum of means. It is this which has led me to give my painting a character of even greater bareness.

The whole essence of good drawing - and of good thinking, perhaps - is to work a subject down to the simplest form possible and still have it believable for what it is meant to be.

Simplicity is natures first step, and the last of art.

Art is the exclusion of the unnecessary.

Concision in art is a necessity and an elegance. The verbose painter bores: who will get rid of all these trimmings?

There is but one art, to omit! Oh, if I knew how to omit I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knows how to omit would make an Iliad of a daily paper.

Art, it seems to me, should simplify.

We talk too much. We should talk less and draw more.

Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, mush less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back on content so we can see the thing at all. The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us.

When I started out making music I thought it was about thrills and adding layers, but I realized I want to focus on saying the most with the least.

I cut up loads. I always want everything shorter, shorter, shorter.

Get to the point where the songs sum it all up, and creatively, I'm just like, 'This is it.' I've also learned how to be patient and not really try to overproduce anymore. I used to add instruments, keep adding instruments, but nowadays - I know better now. I know how to let the track breathe.

You can create something strong in art with a few notes. It is like how Aboriginal drawings have a simplicity that is incredibly rich.

The principle of parsimony is valid esthetically in that the artist must not go beyond what is needed for his purpose.

Do not try to paint the grandiose thing. Paint the commonplace so that it will be distinguished.

In common with other artists the photographer wants his finished print to convey to others his own response to his subject. In the fulfillment of this aim, his greatest asset is the directness of the process he employs. But this advantage can only be retained if he simplifies his equipment and technic to the minimum necessary, and keeps his approach from from all formula, art-dogma, rules and taboos. Only then can he be free to put his photographic sight to use in discovering and revealing the nature of the world he lives in.

Writing is about a blank piece of paper and leaving out what’s not supposed to be there.

I try to play the bare essence, to let everything be just what it's supposed to be in that particular spot...You have many things to pick from when you're playing, so you try to train yourself to pick out the best things that you know.

In art, one does not aim for simplicity; one achieves it unintentionally as one gets closer to the real meaning of things.

The great art of writing is knowing when to stop.