Francis Bacon Quotes

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

The analysis of the thing is not the thing itself.

The map is not the territory... The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map.

of rhythm is image / of image is knowing / of knowing there is / a construct

I start with the subject matter I want to write about. Then I make a musical base for that and create an atmosphere with the music. Once I've done that, the lyrics come last.

The more real things get, the more like myths they become.

The reason I don't like realist, photorealist, neorealist, or whatever, is that I am as interested in the artificial as I am in the real.

The things that I paint are things that I know very well.

Words are mere shadows cast by ideas. But the ideas they represent are real.

Engineering or Technology is the making of things that did not previously exist, whereas science is the discovering of things that have long existed.

To us investigators, the concept 'soul' is irrelevant and a matter for laughter. But matter is an abstraction of exactly the same kind, just as good and just as bad as it is. We know as much about the soul as we do of matter.

To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter. To abstract in art is to separate certain fundamentals from irrelevant material which surrounds them.

I think I'm painting a picture of two women but it may turn out to be a landscape.

Every good composition is above all a work of abstraction. All good painters know this. But the painter cannot dispense with subjects altogether without his work suffering impoverishment.

No matter what the genre, I want to see me and my friends. I want to see reality. I want to see what we're really like. I loved 'Bridesmaids'. I thought it was the most honest portrayal of female friendship in such a long time.

The subject gives you the best idea of how to make a photograph. So I just wait for something to happen.

... Nothing resembles reality less than the photograph. Nothing resembles substance less than its shadow. To convey the meaning of something substantial you have to use not a shadow but a sign, not the limitation but the image. The image is a new and different reality, and of course it does not convey an impression of some object, but the mind of the subject; and that is something else again.

First, study the present construction. Second, ask for all past experiences ...study and read everything you can on the subject.

All representations of a thing are inherently abstract.

I am an agnostic on most matters of faith, but on the subjects of maps I have always been a true believer. It is on the map, therefore it is, and I am.

I'm interested in how things are put together, and that's more interesting to me than just regular shows, even though I like The Walking Dead.

The images of things are not the things in themselves.

Sometimes I say that writing a novel is the same as constructing a chair: a person must be able to sit in it, to be balanced on it. If I can produce a great chair, even better. But above all I have to make sure that it has four stable feet.

A thing is not what you say it is or what you photograph it to be or what you paint it to be or what you sculpt it to be. Words, photographs, paintings, and sculptures are symbols of what you see, think, and feel things to be, but they are not the things themselves.

In reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole but only in that aspect of it which is important for us, the rest being intentionally or from necessity omitted.