J. M. Roberts Quotes

I acquired an admiration for Japanese culture, art, and architecture, and learned of the existence of the game of GO, which I still play.

Japan is the most intoxicating place for me. In Kyoto, there's an inn called the Tawaraya which is quite extraordinary. The Japanese culture fascinates me: the food, the dress, the manners and the traditions. It's the travel experience that has moved me the most.

All gardening is landscape painting.

A lot of my stories are inspired by Japanese folklore or literature or movies: I've done stories based on Kabuki and Noh plays, and on Kurosawa's 'Yojimbo' movies.

'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' is one of the most famous books of all Japanese literature, written by the great poet Basho in 1689.

I am an admirer of haiku, and I'm a great admirer of Japanese literature in general.

In Japan, you can learn how to make a bunch of flowers. This is an art. Tea ceremony, it's an art.

One of the amazing things about 'Seven Samurai' is that there are a lot of characters. And considering you have so many, and they all have shaved heads, and you've got good guys and bad guys and peasants, you get to understand a lot of them without too much being said.

We find Japan a little more difficult to understand because it has proven its 20th century prowess though the ancient traditions still persist.

I've always wanted to see what it would be like to live in feudal Japan; I think that would be interesting.

I've loved Japanese culture for a long, long time, from doing martial arts, to the block prints, to the music. It's a country that I love, and a culture that I love.

Japanese culture? I kind of love everything about it. I love the food. Everyone's really nice. There's just a lot about Japan that's really cool.

I loved Japanese culture before even realizing it was, in fact, Japanese culture. The cartoons and anime I was watching as a child, my favorite video games, and even in pro wrestling - my favorite wrestlers and matches originated in Japan.

Japan, for me, will always be my inspiration source.

My life was very Japanese.

I enjoy painting, cutting the lawn and working in the garden when I have time. That's therapy for me. I enjoy working with my hands.

I have never subscribed to the Dirty Pallet school of painting.

I'm just a landscape painter. I look out the window and I see what's going on, and I paint it. While I'm painting it, I also write thoughts about what I see going on out there.

I hate all poets and painters.

I am a Communist. My painting is Communist painting.

If politics is an art, it is not like sculpture or painting, where one side acts and the other is passive material. It is more like drama without a script, or dance without choreography - in other words, improvisation.

[I am not for] spending the public money in the encouragement of the Fine Arts. Whether it is to be painting or sculpture, or both; if painting, what sort of painting, what are to be the subjects chosen, and who are to be the artists employed? All these questions furnish ample food for discussion, difference, and dispute.

The ronin were those masterless men who roamed around, and yet they found themselves getting involved in circumstances they hadn't expected.

I think every culture - you can call it an American Ronin, a medieval knight errant, you could talk about 'Shane.' There is an archetype that I think is actually common to a lot of cultures, and even the Clint Eastwood stuff was probably as influenced by the Japanese stuff, and yet done by an Italian.

Today the arts exist in isolation, from which they can be rescued only through the conscious, cooperative effort of all craftsmen. Architects, painters, and sculptors must recognize anew and learn to grasp the composite character of a building both as an entity and in its separate parts.