No I.D. Quotes

The best artists know what to leave out.

Less is more.

Less is only more where more is no good.

Art is about eliminating almost everything in order to focus on the thing that you need to talk about.

It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table.

I'd rather create a miniature painting than a Taj Mahal of a book.

Extreme complication is contrary to art.

It's not what you play but what you leave out that makes the difference.

Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.

I sometimes ponder on variation form and it seems to me it ought to be more restrained, purer.

Everything man is doing in architecture is to try to go against nature. Of course we have to understand nature to know how far we have to go against nature. The secret, I think, of the future is not doing too much. All architects have the tendency to do too much.

I've always thought that less was a lot more.

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

These rough sketches, which are born in an instant in the heat of inspiration, express the idea of their author in a few strokes, while on the other hand too much effort and diligence sometimes saps the vitality and powers of those who never know when to leave off.

The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.

Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be.

Here's a vice: I say yes to too many things. I wish I had the guilty pleasure of saying no. My goal is to try to do less, but more fully.

I'm often guilty of overcooking and too much arrangement and throwing too much at it. But I think as I get older, I'm learning better when to be empty and when to be full.

I usually go with the 'less is more' approach.

So much of artistic creation is just exclusion. It's not creating things; it's just excluding things that really aren't going to be helpful.

It's amazing to me how often the answer to making something sound better is to play something less.

I always think less is more.

A good painting is a lot like a good joke: you need to know when to stop, too many 'punchlines and you will have gone too far.

Art is the exclusion of the unnecessary.

I love him who desireth not too many virtues. One virtue is more of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one's destiny to cling to.