Peter Brook Quotes

An art aims, above all, at producing something beautiful which affects not our feelings but the organ of pure contemplation, our imagination.

A good piece of art should make a revolution inside you.

There's a moment of recognition. It's that white-light kind of stuff that just 'works.' I love that. And you know it when it happens, whether it's a movie, music, a building, a book.

When I go to movies and I love the movie, it's because it feels like it articulated something about how we're living now, and also gives me some insight into my own life. I feel actually altered after having seen it.

When I was 12 years old, someone took me to see Martha Graham. It was nothing like what I thought of as serious dancing and even then I knew I was having a great experience. It was as if somebody was moving through space like no one ever did before.

It is brilliant going to the theatre and being forced to sit and listen and think about life. It can be almost a near-religious experience.

One of the reasons I love to come to Paris is because the decorative arts are so refined that I am always walking through one proscenium into another frame.

As a consumer, I don't create art, but I think whatever the message is, art has to touch you.

All art is about appealing to emotion.

That's really the whole point of art - it's to take something commonplace and draw people on a path so that, all of a sudden, they have a new impression of everything around them.

So, anyway, I think the format of love songs for me stopped becoming about people and started becoming about life.

Being a part of 'Hamilton' is remarkably special. It's a very powerful show that has spectacular emotional and political relevance.

The work of art itself is . . . a vibrant, magical, and exemplary object which returns us to the world in some way more open and enriched.

The art of music is good, for the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselves good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as a mean, the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly understood by proof.

Great art has dreadful manners. The greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your reality.

Nothing is as uplifting as standing before a great painting whether it was painted in 1505 or last Tuesday.

The artist's job? To be a miracle worker: make the blind see, the dull feel, the dead to live.

Sometimes art is just about getting a reaction, that's really the end-all be-all.

Drama criticism ... is a self-knowing account of the way in which one's consciousness has been modified during an evening at the theatre.

The true poem is not that which the public read. There is always a poem not printed on paper,... in the poet's life. It is what hehas become through his work. Not how is the idea expressed in stone, or on canvas or paper, is the question, but how far it has obtained form and expression in the life of the artist. His true work will not stand in any prince's gallery.

Were it not for music, we might in these days say, the Beautiful is dead.

I am proud to have been in a business that gives pleasure, creates beauty, and awakens our conscience, arouses compassion, and perhaps most importantly, gives millions a respite from our so violent world.

The novel...creates a bemusing effect. The short story, on the other hand wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the primitive craving for art, the wit, paradox and beauty of shape, the longing to see a dramatic pattern and significance in our experience.

Images are really powerful. People fall in love with images, and as a way of falling in love with someone because they're like an image.

The nourishment of Cezanne's awkward apples is in the tenderness and alertness they awaken inside us.