Tom Robbins Quotes

It [abstract art] should be enjoyed just as music is enjoyed after a while you may like it or you may not.

As a consumer, I don't create art, but I think whatever the message is, art has to touch you.

It's the same with visual arts, you have some really cool, wonderful striking images that make you think and then again you have wonderful striking images that just take you away from the existing world for a second. And I like the latter a bit more.

I'm just singing a song, and if people want to laugh, that's their business.

The beauty of any artwork is that it becomes the person that's watching it: What do you take out of it?

I don't know if it's art, but I know I like it.

The big thing about writing is three commands: Have fun. Don't think. Don't care.

Beautiful jewelry, a beautiful room - that's what museums are - a beautiful painting, a beautiful face, it makes you feel good to look at, and that's a beautiful thing.

I am one of the heretics who believes that art must be enjoyed first and analyzed later.

If I go to the National Gallery and I look at one of the great paintings that excite me there, it's not so much the painting that excites me as that the painting unlocks all kinds of valves of sensation within me which return me to life more violently.

The first impression of a work of art is its otherness from reality.

The world is too serious. To get mad at a work of art-because maybe somebody, somewhere is blowing his stack over what I've done-is like getting mad at a hot fudge sundae.

A fat lot of good it would do if I told you that Titian's courtesans make you want to caress them. Some day you'll see the Titians for yourself, and if they have no effect on you, then you don't understand the first thing about painting. And I wouldn't be able to help you.

You should go to picture-galleries and museums of sculpture to be acted upon, and not to express or try to form your own perfectlyfutile opinion. It makes no difference to you or the world what you may think of any work of art. That is not the question; the point is how it affects you. The picture is the judge of your capacity, not you of its excellence; the world has long ago passed its judgment upon it, and now it is for the work to estimate you.

Bad art is never really enjoyed in the same sense in which good art is enjoyed. It is only "liked": it never startles, prostrates, and takes captive.

If people would just look at the paintings, I don't think they would have any trouble enjoying them. It's like looking at a bed of flowers, you don't tear your hair out over what it means.

When I'm working, on stage, entertaining people, or watching someone do something amazing, it inspires me to be the best artist that I can be. I enjoy being around art - whether it be a museum, a Broadway show - or even writing a poem. Those are things that make me feel alive and inspire me.

The lower one's vitality, the more sensitive one is to great art.

All I know is when I start getting serious about songwriting... it's like a playground. All responsibilities slip away and you're with your essence. There can be delight there and self-discovery. You can dance there... I think of it as my serious playground.

In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.

The masterpiece should appear as the flower to the painter - perfect in its bud as in its bloom - with no reason to explain its presence - no mission to fulfill - a joy to the artist, a delusion to the philanthropist - a puzzle to the botanist - an accident of sentiment and alliteration to the literary man.

And don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.

All fiction, if it's successful, is going to appeal to the emotions. Emotion is really what fiction is all about. That's not to say fiction can't be thoughtful, or present some interesting or provocative ideas to make us think. But if you want to present an intellectual argument, nonfiction is a better tool. You can drive a nail with a shoe but a hammer is a better tool for that. But fiction is about emotional resonance, about making us feel things on a primal and visceral level.

One's roused by this, another finds that fit: Each loves the play for what he brings to it.

All of my plays have puzzled some people, and I'm happy to say delighted a few, but a lot of people have just not seen how quite to look at them. And this film... if you like my writing, you'll like this film. If you don't, you won't like the film. It's pretty faithful to - it's a pretty uncompromising presentation of my way of seeing things, I suppose.