Todd Haynes Quotes

You perhaps know me as a novelist. Literature is one of the arts - in fact, the noblest of the arts. That is not my opinion; it was first expressed by the ancients. As art, literature has many similarities with the other art forms.

I was a fine arts major in college, and a painter for many years. And I found that, like writing, art is very similar.

Someday I'd love to do Shakespeare.

I went to college and studied writing, and I got involved in theater. It's always been my passion.

My mother taught Shakespeare and used to act.

Theater was a big part of my life from the beginning.

I was a visual artist primarily and a writer, even from a very young age.

I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.

Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a 'poet.' After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.

I also had a tremendous passion for art and read a lot.

I worked out a rather deep-dish theory defining the theater as a form of architecture rather than a form of literature.

We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti had a tremendous education as an artist and also an enormous knowledge of literarture.

Work in the theater sharpened my verse and my cinema.

Before acting, I was always attracted to words, to literature - be they the words of Williams, Arthur Miller, Shakespeare or Moliere.

I was influenced by surrealist poetry and painting as were thousands of other people, and it seems to me to have become a part of the way I write, but it's not.

Form is endlessly interesting to me, and I love poetry as a formal enterprise.

I directed a piece of theater in Italy. We took nine fables from the town and we created a play.

All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.

Shakespeare is rich and beautiful, and it can be an amazing experience to read and to watch and to work on.

Fine art is really something I want to get into.

Literature is a state of culture, poetry is a state of grace, before and after culture.

Shakespeare's always on my dance card if it can be.

You know, I love plays. I love the smell of a theater. The old rooms and the carpet and all that stuff. I love to tell stories. Even before I was doing music, I saw myself as a director.

I'm a painter. I was a graffiti artist, and I painted all over the world.