Art and Literature

An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.

Paul Valéry, in Art and Literature

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

T. S. Eliot, in Art and Literature

Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.

Mark Twain, in Art and Literature

I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

Mark Twain, in Art and Literature

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.

Mark Twain, in 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

The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.

Tom Clancy, in Art and Literature

No sane man will dance.

Cicero, 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

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody has read.

Mark Twain, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

Igor Stravinsky, 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

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

Let's have some new clichés.

Samuel Goldwyn, 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

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

Edmond Jules Goncourt, in Art and Literature

In a painting I want to say something comforting.

Vincent van Gogh, in Art and Literature

Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

Joseph Conrad, in Art and Literature

It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself.

Salvador Dalí, in Art and Literature

Picasso is a communist. Neither am I.

Salvador Dalí, in Art and Literature