Quotes about Art

An artist needn't be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.

The secret to film is that it's an illusion.

Movies can be instruments of enlightenment.

It is well known that great art, great music and great literature can emerge out of great pain. This does not lessen the reality of the suffering of the artist, composer or writer, but it points to something creative and redemptive in the human person, made in the image of God, which can bring forth a thing of beauty in the midst of surrounding ugliness, brutality and evil. Nowhere is this more true than in the book of Lamentations.

If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.

Supreme art is the region of Equals. There is no primacy among masterpieces.

The history of music is mortal, but the idiocy of the guitar is eternal.

Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch. The brotherhood of man on earth wil be possible on a basis of kitsch.

Extremes mean borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism in art and in politics is a veiled longing for death.

The genius of lyric poetry is the genius of inexperience.

A poet not in love is out at sea; He must have a lay-figure.