John Fowles Quotes

As artists, we do the work that we do. Receiving an award or not receiving an award in no way diminishes one's talent or value.

Art is expression, and to have high expression you must have something high to express.

When art is about craftsmanship, then guys like me don't make it as artists.

You've just got to believe that people will see and appreciate the value in the music and the artistry that we bring when they hear it.

When you get the personality, you don't need the nudity.

Art is good but it isn't the best.

Money is something that can be measured; art is not. It's all subjective.

If you make a record, you should ask yourself, 'Did it make someone cry, in a good way, not a bad way?' There should almost be subjective emotional criteria for evaluating work, instead of just profitability.

I think hopefully we've got enough brain cells left to decide if our music is really worth something.

We don't really want to think that the artist is only very skilled, that he has merely devoted his life to perfecting a certain set of intelligible skills.

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

It should be quite clear that it is possible for unpleasant people who are small in various ways other than in their artistic genius to produce great art. Art and morality have no necessary connection.

The best of any artist is in their art.

Art is a gift and if nobody hears it, that doesn't make it any less of a gift.

Part of my gradual education of myself has been to think that there is a deep relationship between the nature of the creature and the worth of the art.

I don't think [price] reflects if the work is good or bad.A good artist shouldn't be nervous about that.

As my uncle always says, 'If your vibe outweighs your substance, you're destined to be a novelty.' I think that is true in all art.

Almost any fool can paint an academy picture, and any imbecile can shoot off a Kodak.

There is only one Art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth. ... Thus, from the standpoint of the work and its worth it is irrelevant to which political ideas the artist as a citizen claims allegiance, which ideas he would like to serve with his work or whether he holds any such ideas at all.

I tell you (dogmatically, if you like to call it so, knowing it well) a square inch of man's engraving is worth all the photographs that were ever dipped in acid... Believe me, photography can do against line engraving just what Madame Tussaud's wax-work can do against sculpture. That and no more. (1865)

I think that a lot of artists have succeeded in making what I might call "curator's art." Everybody's being accepted, and I always want to say, "Really? That's what you've come for? To make art that looks a lot like somebody else's art?" If I am thinking of somebody else's art in front of your art, that's a problem.

The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist

One cannot demand of art that it pay you in any other way than in the satisfaction of the work itself.

I refuse the title of artist to those who owe their reputations to a physical deformity. I regard them as buffoons.

Only dull and impotent artists screen their work with sincerity. In art there is need for truth, not sincerity.