A. S. Byatt Quotes

There's something imminent in the work, but the circle is only completed by the viewer.

When you use the language of 'fact checking' to talk about a film, I think you're sort of fundamentally misunderstanding how art works. You don't fact check Monet's 'Water Lilies.' That's not what water lilies look like; that's what the sensation of experiencing water lilies feel like. That's the goal of the piece.

When we make the show, we are always talking about how the show is really in between what we make and what the viewer thinks of it.

I read things and imagine them and then kind of start trying to kind of take what I imagine and make it visual for everybody else to see. It just happens to be my personal vision, and every person's is going to be different, every book reader.

All art is unstable. Its meaning is not necessarily that implied by the author. There is no authoritative voice. There are only multiple readings.

I don't expect everyone to get something deep out of it. Some people can just listen to the music, or get their aggressions out, but I think with any great painting or movie, album or whatever it is, it's better if people can take what they need from it. That they're not forced to get some particular message.

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself.

If I was an artist, and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art.

It depends little on the object, much on the mood, in art.

If you want to paint the inner life, you paint it from the exterior. From the exterior, you breathe the inner life into your painting.

I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.

I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.

I try to avoid describing one interpretation of my books. Of course I have an opinion. I have things I want to say, but I don't ever want to limit anybody, to have them say, 'Oh, he said this, so that's what it's about.' I'm happy people bring their own stuff to it.

I think writers like to see how people bring their words to life, and it's always surprising. Always, no matter what, whether it's good or bad, it's always surprising because a whole human being is coming to that piece of writing.

One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.

With most of the songs and music that I've composed, irrespective of the myriad videos made, I was always careful not to overly define the experience, leaving room for people to internalize things for themselves, making their experience more integral.

For me, until I know that the audience really gets what I'm trying to communicate I'm not done.

It is conceivable that what is unified form to the author or composer may of necessity be formless to his audience.

I think that an artist is a bit like a computer. He receives information from the world around him and from his past and from his own experiences. And it all goes into the brain.

Ironically, my paintings don't photograph well.

I always hate explaining away songs, because for me they mean something, and for other people, they'll mean something absolutely different.

I wanted to communicate what I had seen, so that others could see it.

The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.

I make a film - and once I've made it, everyone comes along and says 'Ah! This is a film that's political, or social', or whatever. But I'm not telling the story that they see. I made a film, told a story, but I wasn't thinking about exactly what it all meant.