For me, Bach is like Shakespeare. He has known all and felt all. He is everything.
Art should not be bound by barriers or language. The Hindi film industry is a testament to that. We speak only Hindi, but we premiere in Germany and Japan. Our films do phenomenally well there. We transcend the barriers of language and culture. We welcome you in. I think that's what art should be, and I hope America reaches that place.
A great poet does not express his or her self; he expresses all of our selves.
Comics, in a sense, the style, the images - it's almost like music. They say music is a universal language, but when the eyes behold something, a figure, somebody moving; it's real, and it cannot be denied.
Whosoever loves not picture is injurious to truth, and all the wisdom of poetry. Picture is the invention of heaven, the most ancient and most akin to nature. It is itself a silent work, and always one and the same habit.
I don't really believe in political art. I feel in my heart the purpose of art transcends cultural and class and politics. I think something like the Sistine Chapel is something that goes beyond just being a Christian thing. It transcends its Christianity and becomes sort of a universal beauty. And I think that's true of music and art and literature.
A good novel doesn't just transcend the boundaries of its target market - it knows nothing about target markets.
The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
He thought what a fine thing it was that people made music all over the world, even in the strangest settings – probably even on polar expeditions.
Mime, like music, knows neither borders nor nationalities.
A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.
Because when an artist has to assert that her intended audience is all humans rather than those who happen to be of her particular gender or race, what she’s actually having to assert is the breadth and depth of her own humanity.
You know, there's a saying in art that in order to be universal you must be specific. So I think every artist feels that he is dealing with specific things but that it also has significance universally.
I don't think there is any such thing as a black writer or a white writer. Ultimately, there is someone whom one reads.
The artist is one who makes a concentrated statement about the world in which he lives and that statement tends to become impersonal-it tends to become universal and enduring because it comes out of something very particular.
The great thing about musicals is that they transcend race.
I think that music and art and film, at their best, can connect with something that is eternal in human beings, that might not have so many labels on it, something that's ultimately universal and that may just be a feeling.
It's not a special taste. An American composer should have something to say to a cab driver.
All that is best in the great poets of all countries is not what is national in them, but what is universal.
I find that Bach is appealing to a lot of different audiences. It really hits people at their core in different ways, but it also creates a meditative space. I just feel like I can play it, and it reaches people.
You have got to stress the freedom of music to really branch out and be universal.
The aesthetic principle is the same in every art, only the material differs.
I think ethnic and regional labels are insulting to writers and really put restrictions on them. People don't think your work is quite as universal.
Music is meant to cross boundaries.
It's something that - jazz is one of the few things that you can go and listen to, I don't care where you're from, what you are, what background you come from - there's something there for you.
