Victor LaValle Quotes

Art has to be reflective of our society.

Art reflects society. Cinema doesn't dictate - you portray what the society demands.

The art of a people is a true mirror to their minds.

What thoughts are to the individual, art is to the community as a whole. That's where you reflect on who you are, who you hope to be, what you've gone through, and where you hope to go.

Music and fashion are a sign of the times and a reflection of what people want and need at this very day and age.

Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.

Music is always a reflection of what's going on in the hearts and minds of the culture.

Movies are more than a commodity. Movies are to our civilization what dreams and ideals are to individual lives: They express the mystery and help define the nature of who we are and what we are becoming.

Western civilization shapes the content of my films, provides me with subjects that haven't been used before.

True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time.

Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.

In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.

Asian literature is evolving with the people. It's always a reflection on what's happening to the culture at large.

Popular culture is most powerful when it offers us a vision of how our society should look - or at least reproduces our reality.

The best kind of art or writing holds up a mirror to society.

Art is observing society around you, representing it through your eyes.

Many of the traits in my characters are exaggerations of things I see in myself. But in 'How Should a Person Be?' I wasn't trying to write about myself so much as a combination of myself and these women I was seeing in our culture.

Art is the signature of a generation; artists have a way of defining the times.

Literature is the voice of the age and the state; the character, energy, and resources of the country are reflected and imaged forth in the conceptions of its great minds; they are organs of the time; they speak not their own language, they scarce think their own thoughts; but under an impulse like the prophetic enthusiasm of old, they must feel and utter the sentiments which society inspires.

Change is an internal thing. Different things happen or transform, and music and art is a documentation of that.

Stories serve the purpose of consolidating whatever gains people or their leaders have made or imagine they have made in their existing journey thorough the world.

But what I'm very interested in, whether it's writing, whether it's hosting a show, whether it's cooking food, I'm just into the discussions of identity, culture and the politics of culture.

Well, I don't think anyone now would say that they're painting the state of the culture of America. I think that's too grand and pompous a thing for anybody to claim.

The role of culture is that it's the form through which we as a society reflect on who we are, where we've been, where we hope to be.

All films speak to their times. It becomes obvious only after.