David Elliott Quotes

It's an artist's duty to reflect the times in which we live.

I think art always comments on the time and place it was created.

You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.

Admittedly, it is really our duty, as artists, to hold up a mirror to our own era; but, on the other hand, these works have lives of their own, and they're still alive today.

I don't think that early hip hop stood out to be a social critique. A lot of fans of mine think that hip hop's ultimate responsibility is to critique social structures.

But I don't think that poetry is a good, to use a contemporary word, venue, for current events.

People could live very happily without the Turner Prize, but they could not live without real communication and emotion.

I think it's really the job of the composer, the artist, the painter, the writer to present people with options. I'm just really reflecting the thoughts and actions around me.

Literature is the denunciation of the times in which one lives.

The theatre is a spiritual and social X-ray of its time.

Film-makers are always going to be interested in making movies that plug into society around them. That's what a vibrant, artistically alert community should be doing. After all, it would be sad if we only made films about alien robots.

A culture produces ideas which are being explored, which of interest to that culture at that moment. And I think one of the things a writer can do is to take those ideas and go a bit further with them.

If I take a less defensive tone, I'd admit that I couldn't write today a very jazzy, contemporary look at America as I did in 1979 in States of Desire.

Part of being an artist is being able to write about the world you live in and the times that you've been a part of.

I think we give too much importance to artists talking about the art and the film and the books and the plays and the music - it's done; the material is there. But we talk about it because it's part of the game. I'm comfortable with it.

I think artists throughout the history of time have always been controversial and have been a voice to speak to public culture in a way that a politician can't because they'll lose their constituency.

I believe, as artists, I do think we have a responsibility, and there's also a place for a lot of different artists. It is nice when music captures the honesty of the time but also what we're going through in that moment.

The only serious function films can serve is to act as a record of their times.

It's easier to make art for a society at a certain point in time with an understanding of what's going on.

My music reflects the time on which we live, both in terms of arrangements, as well as in the subjects treated in the lyrics.

Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.

Every artist, as child of his age, is impelled to express the spirit of his age.

Artists have to show us what is not going well within the person and within the society, not try to cover it up.

The condition of the theater is always an accurate measure of the cultural health of a nation. A play always exists in the present tense (if it is a valuable one), and its music -- its special noise -- is always contemporary. The most valuable function of the theater as an art form is to tell us who we are, and the health of the theater is determined by how much of that we want to know.

Art is about the dynamics of the human experience.