Art and Literature

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

Gilbert Highet, in Art and Literature

The writer, making every effort to appear innocent and noble, takes his revenge with the pen; while the murderer, less hypocrtical, takes it with the sword.

Christopher Spranger, The Effort to Fall, in Art and Literature

There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.

George Bernard Shaw, 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

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

Pablo Picasso, in Art and Literature

Art is the lie that makes us realize the truth.

Pablo Picasso, 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

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

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

Flannery O'Connor, 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

I choose a block of marble and chop off everything I don't need.

François-Auguste Rodin, (on how he created his statues), in Art and Literature

In a painting I want to say something comforting.

Vincent van Gogh, 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

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

Gustave Flaubert, in Art and Literature

Some editors are failed writers, but then, so are most writers.

T. S. Eliot, in Art and Literature

I didn't like the play. But I saw it under unfavorable circumstances -- the curtains were up.

Groucho Marx, in Art and Literature

A book is a mirror; if an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out.

G. C. Lichtenberg, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

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

John Keats, in Art and Literature

Picasso is a communist. Neither am I.

Salvador Dalí, in Art and Literature