Art and Literature

If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.

Anton Chekhov, (advice to a novice playwright), in Art and Literature

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

Elvis Presley, in Art and Literature

If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it better not come at all.

John Keats, in Art and Literature

Dictionaries are like watches: the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

Samuel Johnson, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

Samuel Johnson, in Art and Literature and Work and Recreation

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.

Samuel Johnson, in Art and Literature

I live for books.

Thomas Jefferson, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

Love affairs have always greatly interested me, but I do not greatly care for them in books or moving pictures. In a love affair, I wish to be the hero, with no audience present.

E. W. Howe, in Art and Literature and Love and Hate

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

Flannery O'Connor, in Art and Literature

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

P. J. O'Rourke, in Art and Literature

Learning music by reading about it is like making love by mail.

Luciano Pavarotti, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

Art is the lie that makes us realize the truth.

Pablo Picasso, in Art and Literature

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist after one grows up.

Pablo Picasso, in Art and Literature

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

Flannery O'Connor, in Art and Literature

Art is a deliberate recreation of a new and special reality that grows from your response to life. It cannot be copied; it must be created.

Unknown, in Art and Literature

Any time something is written against me, I not only share the sentiment but feel I could do the job far better myself. Perhaps I should advise would-be enemies to send me their grievances beforehand, with full assurance that they will receive my every aid and support. I have even secretly longed to write, under a pen name, a merciless tirade against myself.

Jorge Luis Borges, (autobiographical essay, 1970), in Art and Literature

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.

Gilbert Highet, in Art and Literature

A painting in a museum probably hears more foolish remarks than anything else in the world.

Edmond Jules Goncourt, in Art and Literature

Let's have some new clichés.

Samuel Goldwyn, in Art and Literature

In a painting I want to say something comforting.

Vincent van Gogh, in Art and Literature