Elliott Erwitt Quotes

Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation.

Art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudointellectual masturbation . . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce -- render emotional -- his audience, each time.

Photography for me is not looking, it's feeling. If you can't feel what you're looking at, then you're never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.

The desire to discover, the desire to move, to capture the flavor, three concepts that describe the art of photography.

My goal is to connect with people emotionally. I take life’s experiences and translate them into music — music that hopefully creates an impact on the listener.

I can stand at the back of the theater and watch an audience laugh, cry, and be moved by what I do. I can entertain people around the world. It's nice when you can give someone that gift.

It is easy to take a photograph, but it is harder to make a masterpiece in photography than in any other art medium.

Seeing is not enough; you have to feel what you photograph

You see what you think, you see what you feel, you are what you see If with the camera you can make others see it - that is photography.

You look at somebody's work as an actor and you can see their emotional life being fed into it and you can kind of feel them through it.

My real motivation came from my desire for music videos to have the same equal soul-touching emotional resonance that straight music does.

I love music. I do play. It's like mathematics, and it's also emotional. It's nice to play, for no other reason than just to play.

Music gets us in touch with our emotions in a way that's more intimate than any other art form.

Only a fraction of the camera's possibilities interests me - the marvelous mixture of emotion and geometry, together in a single instant.

Poems are a hotline to our hearts, and we forget this emotional power at our peril

A lot of people play to impress, but the really gifted ones play to move. That's the greatest point of ever doing this.

In fine arts, when you make a painting, it's just a painting. But if you make a painting in the entertainment industry, it can be an album cover or a t-shirt or a logo. I like that entertainment has this usefulness - that it's ultimately trying to make a bunch of people feel something, and to think about life and be able to use things that were so simple and direct but potentially have a really powerful effect.

It is not the style but the quality and emotional impact of work that makes it marketable. Unless we make art that connects with people, we won't sell much, no matter what the style or subject.

Every work of art has one indispensable mark ... the center of it is simple, however much the fulfillment may be complicated.

I do not want [photography] explained to me in terms of... formulas, learned, but so hopelessly unsatisfying. I do not want my butterfly stuck on a pin and put in a glass case. I want to see the sunlight on its wings as it flits from flower to flower and I don't care a rap what its Latin name may be.

I never even thought about whether or not they understand what I'm doing . . . the emotional reaction is all that matters as long as there's some feeling of communication, it isn't necessary that it be understood.

I feel I should try to reveal. When you hit it right, you produce an emotional response in the listener that can be cathartic. When you're wrong, you're soppy, sentimental.

Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving.

I'm an emotional creature. I make music to express that.

Storytelling with music is a really powerful device.