Emil Cioran Quotes

I speak for an art ... weary of its puny exploits, weary of pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing, of going a little further along a dreary road.

As an artist, it's possible to get tired of yourself.

I guess all bands get to that point where they run out of inspiration and just get bored with the chemistry.

Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigues, I have had my vision.

I quit comics because I got completely sick of it. I was drawing comics all the time and didn't have the time or energy to do anything else. That got to me in the end. I never made enough money from comics to be able to take a break and do something else. Now I just can't stand comics. . . . I wish my work would be recognized by a larger crowd of people as more art than be stuck with the cartoonist label for the rest of my life.

Painted faces, sun burnt skin, fixed expressions, smiles worn thin.

How hard, how desperately hard, is the way of the experimenter in art!

I do not know anything about Art with a capital A. What I do know about is my art. Because it concerns me. I do not speak for others. So I do not speak for things which profess to speak for others. My art, however, speaks for me. It lights my way.

I am all for art's finding a large audience. But the way that's happening now, with big works filling big galleries and bigger shows, is mostly stopping statements from being made. Or heard. Or talked about. Or really examined. It's watering things down.

It is impossible to get exhausted in work for God. We get exhausted because we try to do God's work in our own way.

We didnt come all this way for no two seats when all of us is tired.

The idea of a detached art, of poetry as a charm which exists only to distract our leisure, is a decadent idea and an unmistakable symptom of our power to castrate.

If any vestige of the American automobile industry is to survive, it must involve state-of-the-art vehicles that are not equal to but surpass the best imports in every way.

There are so many rules in the art world. I don't like rules and I break them all the time. I don't care if people think I'm overexposed. What I care about is if I'm going to run out of energy. Overexposure is only a problem if you are drained of energy and cannot come up with new ideas. Every artist has to recognize that and know when to stop for a moment.

Poetry is the plough that turns up time in such a way that the abyssal strata of time, its black earth, appear on the surface.

Art is a way to get strength from something that is life-affirming. It can be quite violent and still be life-affirming.

Everything appears to me to be authored, in some strange way. And I wonder if this is not the spreading assumption of the psychedelic illusion/delusion/revelation that life is in fact art.

I'm done with girls on rocks! I've painted them for thirteen years and I could paint them and sell them for thirteen more. That's the peril of the commercial art game. It tempts a man to repeat himself. it's an awful thing to get to be a rubber stamp. I'm quitting my rut now while I'm still able.

These are six ways of courting defeat, which must be carefully noted by the general who has attained a responsible post.

Good or bad, the one thing I can say about my art is, if I can quote Sinatra, I did it my way.

Rome & Greece swept Art into their maw & destroy'd it; a Warlike State never can produce Art. It will Rob & Plunder & accumulate into one place, & Translate & Copy & Buy & Sell & Criticize, but not Make.

He who wishes to fight must first count the cost. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be dampened. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

I never, for instance, have the urge to paint animals 'the way I see them,' but rather the way they are... The way they themselves look at the world and feel their being

We have found a way to bring to millions of people an art that they can understand.