Art Quotes

“What you have now is a Hollywood that is pure poison. Hollywood was a central place in the history of art in the 20th century: it was human idealism preserved. And then, like any great place, it collapsed, and it collapsed into the most awful machinery in the world.”

-- Emir Kusturica

“Translation is the art of failure.”

-- Umberto Eco

“The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.”

-- Jean Cocteau

“Life is not an exact science, it is an art.”

-- Samuel Butler

“The art world is an all-volunteer force. No one has to be here if he or she doesn't want to be, and we should be associating with anyone we want to.”

-- Jerry Saltz

“There is nothing in the world of art like the songs mother used to sing.”

-- Billy Sunday

“A sculptor is a person who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician by sounds.”

-- Henry Moore

“The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.”

-- Anatole France

“I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.”

-- Henry Adams

“Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.”

-- Boris Pasternak