Russell Lynes Quotes

Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized.

It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.

I am very interested in what has been called bad taste. I believe the fear of displaying a soi-disant bad taste stops us from venturing into special cultural zones.

Poets have to be sensitive to their audience, but it does not mean that they censor themselves. I realise my audience is diverse. Some will read with empathy and curiosity while others will take offense.

I will never be a fan of any kind of political correctness: I think it's instant death to creativity.

The kind of people who always go on about whether a thing is in good taste invariably have very bad taste.

When the uncreative tell the creative what to do, it stops being art.

There will always be some films that the audience would like and some that they don't. But if I start becoming a slave to appreciation, I will be subjecting myself and my talent to one particular type of taste. I don't want to do that.

In America, I don't think you have the creative freedom that I'm used to. Traditionally, it's a producer's cinema here.

An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.

Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.

[Good taste] is a nineteenth-century concept. And good taste has never really been defined. The effort of projecting 'good taste' is so studied that it offends me. No, I prefer to negate that. We have to put a period to so-called good taste.

The only enemy of art is taste.

I hate the idea that I have to represent any particular section of society; I just write good telly, that's all.

The school was prone to dishing out punishments for anything creative that didn't fit with expectation - I just followed the logic and figured the folk club was probably much the same.

Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.

I think one of the things that writers and creative artists generally have to deal with is the censors that we have in our heads, the voices that we have that say you better not tell that and don't tell that, and people will think you're not a good girl, and your grandmother's going to be mad at you and all of those things.

Imagine if someone like John Lennon or Bob Marley, Sid Vicious, Picasso, whomever, were doing their work, and some corporation, some CEO, some branding entity was saying to you, 'Well, you can do that, but you've got to remove this aspect of your work.' There would no longer be that purity anymore.

The artist discards all theories, both his own and those of others. He forgets everything when he is in front of his canvas.

If your choice enters into it, then taste is involved - bad taste, good taste, uninteresting taste. Taste is the enemy of art, A-R-T.

If you're always thinking about someone else's work, about the tradition you're working in, how can you possibly make anything good?

I don't feel that as an artist my job is to offer PR propaganda, whether for the good or for the bad.

There's a good many pictures I'd like to make; we'll see how many I'll be allowed to make.

The vehemence with which certain critics have chosen not simply to criticize what I've written, but to challenge my writing this story at all, speaks of what the book is about: fear of disapproval.

Good taste doesn't exist. It is our taste. We have to be proud of it.