Ryan Phillippe Quotes

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

To me, there's no point in writing merely to entertain.

I believe that true art is universal in its appeal.

I don't believe that art is just for entertainment. I want to create art that is meaningful in some way.

I'm like, 'What world am I living in?' Aren't movies made to have something to say? Why make a movie if you don't have something to say? What are you doing it for? Are you doing it because you want to make a lot of money?

The role of art in society differs for every artist.

I don't think a film that has no effect on people or society is a good film.

At this point, in 2008, if you put out a book, a movie, or write a verse, paint a painting, it should have some sort of social value.

As an artist, I am here to get involved in meaningful films. But that does not mean only films like 'Arabikkadha' should be made. If you give an overdose of such films, the subject will become jaded.

I don't see art as entertainment.

Art cannot be subordinate to its subject, otherwise it is not art but biography.

While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.

Write plays that matter. Raise the stakes. Shout, yell, holler, but make yourself heard. It's time for playwrights to reclaim the theatre. We do that by speaking from the heart about the things that matter most to us. If a play isn't worth dying for, maybe it isn't worth writing.

In a sense, the first (if not necessarily the prime) function of a novelist, of ANY artist, is to entertain. If the poem, painting, play or novel does not immediately engage one's surface interest then it has failed. Whatever else it may or may not be, art is also entertainment. Bad art fails to entertain. Good art does something in addition.

The purpose of painting is to decorate the walls. Therefore it has to be as rich as possible

Art for art's sake is dead, if it ever lived.

I hope I make films where you walk away . . . with work to do, arguments to have, things to worry about, things to care about. In that sense, I would regard what I do as political.

I think that's what all art is for - for people to express what it is to be human. That's the purpose of it.

...The more a picture has to give, the greater it is.

The writer who develops a beautiful style, but has nothing to say, represents a kind of arrested esthetic development; he is like a pianist who acquires a brilliant technique by playing finger-exercises, but never gives a concert.

I am afraid that as evangelicals, we think that a work of art only has value if we reduce it to a tract.

No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.

The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.

If one could only reproduce nature, and always with less beauty than the original, why paint at all?

Art can be very political but that can't be the purpose of art, it can't be the driving force. It isn't with any of the books that I love, anyway.