LP Quotes

I think you can get away with being a bit more political in science fiction.

I never think that anything I'm writing is bluntly political in any way. I'm not going for commentary.

It is difficult to make political art work.

When I do a political movie, I do a political movie.

Art is art. Politics is politics. It's very hard to get them together.

All political art is bad – all good art is political.

I do not write political shows; I should not write political shows.

Art is inherently political. Even trying to make a film that has nothing to do with politics is, in and of itself, a political act.

I'm not a political filmmaker.

Some of the greatest artists did their best work when they got political.

I am of the opinion that I am not a political writer, and, moreover, that as far as true literature is concerned, there actually are no political writers. I think that my writing is no more political than ancient Greek theatre. I would have become the writer I am in any political regime.

Every artistic expression is either influenced by or adds something to politics.

Political art expresses the cliches you agree with, unlike propaganda, which expresses the cliches you don't.

As for political poetry, as it's usually defined, it seems there's very little good political poetry.

I think there is a debate in the arts about, you know, whether we must strive for art for art's sake, and you know, kind of try to keep political debate out of our work. And to that I say, I'd like you to show me an example of, you know, this so-called apolitical art. I don't think there's any such thing.

Science fiction was one of those places, particularly during the McCarthy era, where you could write whatever you wanted because it was beneath contempt. They didn't bother censoring it.

The truth is that sometimes art may not exactly reflect one's personal politics, but the story, the drama, the thing you're trying to say, might want to go in a certain direction, and while it may seem like it has resonance with things that are happening topically, you kind of want the world you're creating to have its own internal logic.

I suspect political fiction is at its best precisely when it doesn't preach, but restricts itself to showing the reader a different way of life or thought, and merely makes it clear that this is an end-point or outcome for some kind of political creed.

A lot of young poets today, from what I've heard and experienced, can't get their heads past George W. Bush, and I've heard so many poems about this democracy and this era of politics that I'm kind of bored by it.

I have some very personal feelings about politics, but I don't get into it because I do comedy already.

All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics.

I had to make a movie about politics sometime in my career and it was impossible to do it seriously.

I do not believe that any work of art can help but be diminished by its adherence at any cost to a political program ... and not for any other reason than that there is no political program -- any more than there is a theory of tragedy -- which can encompass the complexities of real life.

In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes or art that is detached from or independent of politics.

It's interesting that we assign the label 'political' to art that doesn't just fit a mould of status quo. Is 'Downton Abbey' not political? That's political! Every piece of art offers a perspective on the world. And what is politics if not a perspective on the world? 'Downton Abbey' is about class. It's also about race.