Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Quotes

It seems to me that the surest way to remove from the stage really undesirable plays, is for the public to refuse to go to see them. Censorship by law has always seemed to me too difficult and complicated where art of any kind is concerned.

You cannot set art off in a corner and hope for it to have vitality, reality, and substance.

I don't think you can approach any piece of art with boundaries or rules. I think respect is a very important thing, but I also think what we discover along the way is really important.

Every ballet, whether or not successful artistically or with the public, has given me something important.

Nothing is harmful to literature except censorship, and that almost never stops literature going where it wants to go either, because literature has a way of surpassing everything that blocks it and growing stronger for the exercise.

Here's what I just realized: A world in which sport at its best is not seen as some kind of art is a world that doesn't deserve any art.

Part of my attraction to ancient art is that there is an element of risk, of speculation.

Rules and models destroy genius and art.

There are countless artists whose shoes I am not worthy to polish - whose prints would not pay the printer. The question of judgment is a puzzling one.

Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force.

Criticism is the windows and chandeliers of art: it illuminates the enveloping darkness in which art might otherwise rest only vaguely discernible, and perhaps altogether unseen.

The point is that the arts are important enough to have influenced the greatest minds and talents we know. Albert Einstein said that if he were not a physicist, he would probably be a musician.

In the creative industries, there are few things more exciting than a zinger - a thought, idea, line, plot device - anything really, that just totally works in a fundamentally new and fresh way. It's like a uniquely lovely melody or a new taste idea in cooking. Something special, something new, something wonderful. They're also very rare.

The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.

Shakespeare would never have gone far in today's politically correct world.

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets truth.

We don't call art filth or filth art.

Once the government starts forbidding things, then someone will come around the corner saying, “I’ve got it.”

Burzum is not a political or religious band, or even an anti-religious band. Burzum is music - art if you like - and the interpretation of art lies in the eye of the beholder.

Genius resembles a bell; in order to ring it must be suspended into pure air, and when a foreign body touches it, its joyful toneis silenced.

Art cannot be separated from life. It is the expression of the greatest need of which life is capable, and we value art not because of the skilled product, but because of its revelation of a life's experience.

Beauty is a form of genius -- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.

Cultures cherish artists because they are people who can say, Look at that.

To create was a fundament, to appreciate, a supplement.