Raymond Chandler Quotes

I'm somebody who believes in funny things, and laughing, but I do like for them to come from a place that addresses the human condition.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

I don't think tragic situations are necessarily devoid of beauty.

To do art, one thing should always remember - subjects of people in misery have deep meanings.

The delight we find in art amounts to recognition of a saving grace, to an acknowledgment that the problem of life has a solution implicit in its own nature, though not yet formulated by the intellect.

Art is not consciousness per se, but rather its antidote- evolved from within consciousness itself.

It isn't enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of what the story means.

Tragedy is the greatest art form of all. It gives us the courage to continue with our life by exposing us to the pain of life. It is unsentimental, it takes us seriously as human beings, it is not condescending. Paradoxically, by seeing pain we are made greater, it becomes a need.

I do believe abstraction is and was meant to embody deep emotion. I believe that's its job, in the history of art.

A painting is more than the sum of its parts

Life is made for the strong. There is no mercy in it for the weak– none...Such is the tragedy of desire.

That art is best which suggests most.

Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.

Beauty plus pity -- that is the closest we can get to a definition of art.

If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be?

I think art parallels life; it is not a report on nature or on intimate disclosure of inner secrets. Color, in my opinion, behaves like man -- in two distinct ways: first in self-realization and then in the realization of relationships with others.

The purpose of all art is to cause a deep and emotion, also one that is entertaining or pleasing. Out of the depth and entertainment comes value.

Even luxuries are arranged according to ideas and ideals, to make them reflect as much of thought-life as possible - and this is Art.

I believe in Michelangelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed. Amen. Amen.

Art is the reasoned derangement of the senses.

Art to be art must soothe.

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.

To awaken human emotion is the highest level of art.

One writes out of one thing only - one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.

Art is not cozy and it is not mocked. Art tells the only truth that ultimately matters. It is the light by which human things can be mended. And after art there is, let me assure you all, nothing.