M. C. Escher Quotes

Art is all a matter of personality.

What one person might see as violent, someone else may see as beautiful. Maybe even art.

I'm really interested in the nondefinitive element of abstraction.

Style is objective, akin to art, so it varies.

For me, music is pure abstraction.

I guess the role of art is to make something that is ambiguous and complex.

I did best when I had least truth for my subjects.

Who will dare say he has defined art?

But of works of art little can be said.

Imagine if Beethoven had a tape recorder. Then you'd know exactly what he meant. Maybe he meant 'Da da da da' instead of 'Boom boom boom boom!' Who knows?

All records are riddles, and whatever you may want people to think it's about, it may just be throwing them off. And you don't want it to get in the way of what someone else's understanding is. It's not really about anything. At the same time, it will find some meaning.

I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.

I like the ideology of there being no such thing as perfection. But I'm of the opinion that I have witnessed perfection at various times, especially in art.

Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?

People write music, and the music is out there for people to interpret it how they want to.

Fashion and style is just that. Fashion and style. It's not brain surgery.

Fiction, maybe art in general, is a tentative, uncertain enterprise; it's not science, it's an exploration, but you never find much in the way of answers.

Art is more engaging that propaganda.

Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.

I think art is more glorious than life but not more real.

It is not altogether wrong to say that there is no such thing as a bad photograph - only less interesting, less relevant, less mysterious ones.

If I weren't an actor, I'd either be a teacher or a critic.

Film is one of the three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.

An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all.

If you judge everything by how photographically real it looks, then you're missing out on a lot of what art is about and what communication is. There are ambiguities in life, and that should be reflected in art, cinema, and storytelling, I think.