Henry Moore Quotes

It is the addition of strangeness to beauty that constitutes the romantic character in art.

To write a novel is to embark on a quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next step is to execute them. That's a very romantic project. Like Edvard Munch's strange dreamlike canvases where people are stylized, like 'The Scream.' Munch must have had that vision in a dream, he never saw it.

Surrealism was necessary - essential, even - in the 1920s to bridge the gap between rationalism and the subconscious. It started something important. But by the early '60s, it had become petit-bourgeois; it was too intellectual and romantic, and had ground to a halt. It had become respectable.

I have always been a romantic, one of those people who believes that a woman in pink circus tights contains all the secrets of the universe.

Suddenly I've got an overwhelming desire to surround myself with the aura of classical and Romantic art.

All of the art that I love is about peeling back layers and delving into something that's in a subconscious or dream realm. People like Jan Svankmajer, or the artist Yoshimoto Nara, or David Lynch.

America to me is so varied and exciting. I always feel nostalgia for the place I'm not in, and then I get there and find myself in a traffic jam going into the Lincoln Tunnel, and I think, 'God, why was I romanticizing this part of the country?' I think it has to do with the romantic, unrealistic temperament.

What I treasure most at any moment is intimacy, surprise, a sense of mystery, wit, depth and love. A handful of cherished friends offer me this, and the occasional singer or film-maker or artist. But my most reliable sources of electricity are Henry David Thoreau, Shakespeare, Melville and Emily Dickinson.

Romantics consider common sense vulgar.

I'm a hopeless romantic with a dirty mind.

I love my early movies, but naturalism is an artist's early style. Now I want to deal with feelings, dreams, an acceptance of irrationality.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

When I was younger - it might be a romantic idea - I always thought I might go crazy.

A realist, in Venice, would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

I have nothing against romance. I believe that we must hold on to the right to dream and to be romantic. But an Indian village is not something that I would romanticize that easily.

There's the tradition of the 19th-century ballets, and the 20th century has had a difficult time with that tradition. And it's had a difficult time with many components of the Romantic imagination because of modernism.

I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive.

The aspect of kind of living in your imagination and creating a more romantic vision of the world than the reality that you're given - that's definitely something I can sort of relate to.

In every respect, fantasy is like doing abstract paintings.

In Romanticism, the main determinant is the mood, the atmosphere. And in that regard, you could also describe Schubert as a Romantic.

I don't know where my romanticism comes from. My mom and dad would read to me a lot. 'Treasure Island,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' tales of chivalry and knights, things like that. Those are the stories I loved growing up.

My home is attached to a study - in fact, my home is my study, and I have a little room to sleep in. I need to write looking onto the street or a landscape. Looking at reality from some distance gives me romantic visions.

I think the story of 'Alice in Wonderland' in a way is a reminder that life is frightening, it can shift on you at any moment.

The Romantic poets were the prototype ramblers, and I've often found myself following in their footsteps - although perhaps not all of their footsteps since a typical walk for Samuel T. Coleridge might last two days and cover 145km.