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

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

Gilbert K. Chesterton, in Art and Literature

Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.

Voltaire, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

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

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

Elvis Presley, 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

Art is the lie that makes us realize the truth.

Pablo Picasso, 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

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

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

Groucho Marx, 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

I live for books.

Thomas Jefferson, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

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

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

Gilbert Highet, in Art and Literature

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

Let's have some new clichés.

Samuel Goldwyn, in Art and Literature