Greil Marcus Quotes

I would advise puppeteering for any artist. It's a way to break down pretensions. It's a sculpture that can talk. It's a painting that can talk. And it's pure play. I think every artist needs to stay in touch with the idea of playing. The artist should always be playing, always. All art is performance.

Art is a concrete and personal and rather childish thing after all - no matter what people do to graft it into science and make it sociological and psychological; it is no good at all unless it is let alone to be itself - a game of make-believe, or re-production, very exciting and delightful to people who have an ear for it or an eye for it.

In America, everyone writes but no one reads. Everyone's writing all day long - sending emails, tweets, text messages; they all think they're James Cameron's Avatar, performing in some video game for which they make up the script.

I get just as much of a thrill out of constructing a good sentence that gets a laugh at the end as I do from a joke.

Life has to have the plenitude of art.

You might be the funniest guy in the world, but if you don't have anything to talk about, people are eventually going to gravitate towards the guy that's actually saying something.

I'm encouraging other people, whether they're professionals or not, to use their creativity to express themselves, to get a conversation going, to get the party started, really.

The funny thing is musicians often love to go to see visual art because you've got all these pictures to turn into metaphors.

If I can keep losing myself - and finding parts of myself - in other people's writing and direction, then that's all I can really ask for. That's all I want, to keep losing myself.

The social dimension of the art world is fascinating to me, but I also want to entertain the reader, so I will let a character say something funny.

Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd.

It's easier and sociabler to talk technique than it is to make art.

My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall.

Art is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar. We have to recognize that the language of art, all art, is not our mother tongue.

People forget that art is not just a piece of entertainment. It is the place where we collectively declare our values and then act on them. That's one of the most powerful things we have as a community: our culture and our art. And it's the intersection between life and how people deal with life. It's the most important thing we do.

I have never taken a photograph without one thought in my head to amuse myself.

We started to confuse entertainment with art, because art has a component of entertainment. It has to have that or it becomes too boring. It becomes too lost in its own devices. But I just think that we started to lose, and even before that, it's not necessary.

Is there no room for art in the spoken language? What is the use of creating an unnatural language to the exclusion of the natural one?

When you write songs you're commenting on love, you're commenting on sex, relationships, whatever it is that you decide to write about it. And I've wanted to write about politics or spiritual ideas for years.

You know what's the greatest part of anything ever in the history of everything? Exaggeration. No, wait; it's correcting yourself. No, better yet, it's making lists.

In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place.

Kids are so busy with different things and are occupied with other things, so when they do find themselves to be creative, it's often that they can be creative in the kitchen and they get the opportunity to bond with family, friends and talk. It just opens up their lines of communication. We need that now for these young people.

I don't think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

Ain't it funny what people say? Ain't it funny what people write?

I think of myself as a comedian who has the pleasure of writing jokes about things that I actually care about.