Victor Hugo Quotes

Now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. Such rules and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection.

What counts most is finding new ways to get the world down in paint on my own terms.

I really feel that artists or musicians are controversial people. Controversy is part of the nature of art and creativity. If people are not doing that, they're not artists - they're artisans.

I definitely think that fashion is a form of art and love that people can express themselves through what they wear.

As an artist, you don't stop making art because people are not buying it.

If I'm a lousy writer, then an awful lot of people have lousy taste.

As nobody can possibly tell me whether one's writing is bad or good, the only certain value is one's own pleasure. I am sure of that.

There are an awful lot of people in the world and it's going to be terribly hard to photograph all of them... It was my teacher Lisette Model who finally made it clear to me that the more specific you are, the more general it will be.

People should be stopped from writing poetry. There's far too much of it. And if they're any good, they'll go ahead anyways.

A work of art must make the rules: rules do not make a work of art...I tell people I am not a musician; I work with rhythms, frequencies and intensities...tunes are merely the gossips of music.

I hope I will always have the ability to create art and live in a world where I can speak freely, and I can inspire people. I don't know what form that will take.

The laws of art are eternal and don't change at all, as the moral laws don't change in human beings.

For a guy who didn't expect a fan base whatsoever, I'm pretty stoked. People say they don't understand it, and I say that's okay. I don't think anyone can argue that I'm not trying to do my own thing at least.

Literature and the arts are also criticism in a more particular and practical sense. They embody an expository reflection on, a value judgement of, the inheritance and context to which they pertain.

there are people who read my work and accuse me of being political! As far as I'm concerned that's like accusing a dog of having a bark!

(There is) art that states the problems of society and wakes people up to make changes in their lives or in their communities,...art that offers an alternative, that demonstrates human behavior that can become a model for creativity, cooperation, freedom and playfulness, and...art that in itself provides glimpses of a larger consciousness or reflects upon the inexplicable.

Critics are more committed to the rules of art than artists are.

Good or bad, the one thing I can say about my art is, if I can quote Sinatra, I did it my way.

I hope to live all my life for my art, without abandoning my principles one iota, without . . . having painted as much as you can cover with your hand, to please somebody or in order to sell the picture more easily.

I'm not very good at sounding like other people. When you're going through your 20's and trying to get a break and that kind of thing, and you're trying to do something that sounds like film music, your idea of what it would be, it never really worked out for me and it's only really when I learned to trust the fact that I could only really sound like me.

The architect had not stopped to bother about columns and porticos, proportions or interiors, or any limitation upon the epic he sought to materialize; he had simply made a servant of Nature - art can go no further.

If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.

I have intentions as a writer, but people - when they're listening to a track - will take from it what they interpret.

The only problem was I needed to use my own group, and things didn't happen until I did. It wasn't a real country sound, what I did. I've listened to it, and I think it was more a west coast rock thing, you know? But it fit. It was country, but it was my own interpretation of country.

Brancusi has his medium: Picasso, Faulkner, Shostakovich, theirs. Mine happens to be cloth.