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

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

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

Gilbert Highet, in Art and Literature

There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless.

Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote", in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

Art is anything you can get away with.

Terence Trent D'Arby, in Art and Literature

Mir Bahadur Ali is, as we have seen, incapable of evading the most vulgar of art's temptations: that of being a genius.

Jorge Luis Borges, "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim", 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

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

Edmond Jules Goncourt, 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

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

Paul Valéry, in Art and Literature

Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.

Voltaire, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

Frank Zappa, 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

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

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

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

Igor Stravinsky, in Art and Literature