Art And Lies Quotes & Sayings

I am an artist. And An artist is simply a man who is pulled along by a river: on one side sanity lies, and the other madness, yet he will find no peace on either, as the current of his art drags him away from the everyday life on it's banks, where others watch, unable to help him until he reaches the immensity of the ocean. — Felix J. Palma

Be the first to seize intersecting ground, that is ground which lies the intersections of borders or intersections of main thoroughfares of commerce and travel. Your occupation of it gives you access to all who border it and all who would covet it. On intersecting ground, if you establish alliances you are safe, if you lose alliances you are in peril. — Sun Tzu

Life everywhere is life, life is in ourselves and not in the external. There will be people near me, and to be a human being among human beings, and remain one forever, no matter what misfortunes befall, not to become depressed, and not to falter- this is what life is, herein lies its task. I have come to recognize this. This idea has entered into my flesh and blood. Yes, it's true! That head which created, lived b the hightes life of art, which acknowledged and had come to know the highest demands of the spirit, that head has been cut from my shoulders. Memory remains, and the images I have created and still not molded in flesh. They will leave their harsh mark on me, it is true! But my heart is left me, and the same flesh and blood which likewise can love and suffer and desire and remember, and this is, after all, life. on voit le soleil! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I think therefore I am. Does that mean 'I feel therefore I'm not'? But only through feeling can I get at thinking. — Jeanette Winterson

tell me even though lies soft words
it was about to kill me with you that statue

i still in the art of love a baby
between us seas and mountains

you still can't understand
that all men are babies

so if i stood before your love quietly
then quietness in the love is love

our words in love are killing our love
and letters are dying after they're said

love stories may drive you crazy
cause its all full of fantasies

love is not a story,my dear
where the stars marry each other by the end

its to get hot blooded for anything silly
it's our misery, it's our killing doubting

it's this hand that assassin us
and we accept that hand that assassin — Nizar Qabbani

The differences between revolution in art and revolution in politics are enormous. Revolution in art lies not in the will to destroy but in the revelation of what has already been destroyed. Art kills only the dead. — Harold Rosenberg

The art of love is to embrace the world and that which lies beyond it. — Frederick Lenz

modern humanist education believes in teaching students to think for themselves. It is good to know what Aristotle, Solomon and Aquinas thought about politics, art and economics; yet since the supreme source of meaning and authority lies within ourselves, it is far more important to know what you think about these matters. — Yuval Noah Harari

What is teaching but the art of planting and nurturing power?" Lea replied. "Mortals prattle on about lonely impulses of delight and the gift of knowledge, and think that teaching is a trade like metalsmithing or healing or telling lies on television. It is not. It is the dissemination of power unto a new generation and nothing less. For her, as for you, lessons demand real risk in order to attain their true rewards. — Jim Butcher

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man. — John Steinbeck

Karate-do is definitely a martial way, and its identity lies in do or principles. Any martial art without proper training of the mind turns into beastly behavior. — Shoshin Nagamine

Man can never know the loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in the woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. Woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which she is bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love a taking of man within her, an act of birth and rebirth, of child rearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to be. But for woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment man rests inside of her. — Anais Nin

America is a nation of liars, and for that reason science fiction has a special claim to be our national literature, as the art form best adapted to telling the lies we like to hear and to pretend we believe. — Thomas M. Disch

Never speak of yourself to others; make them talk about themselves instead; therein lies the whole art of pleasing. Everybody knows it, and everyone forgets it. — Jules De Goncourt

The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive, and every work of art should be alive. — Hans Hofmann

It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done. — Vincent Van Gogh

My lying is a second skin by now, so easy to forget it's there, so I don't always remember that lying is actually an art, and those who aren't meticulous about it are easily exposed. — Jillian Cantor

Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos ... to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream. — John Cheever

The core of understanding lies in the individual mind, and until that is touched everything is uncertain and superficial. Truth cannot be perceived until we come to fully understand our potential and ourselves. After all, knowledge in the martial arts ultimately means self-knowledge. — Bruce Lee

Fiction and lies are both works of creative art, and creation always reveals the creator. — Helen McCloy

The first generation of therapists doing this work were told by their clients that the one massive cult was everywhere, knew everything, had access to state-of-the-art technology, and was willing to kill both clients and therapists to stop the information from getting out." []
"The reality is that even before stories of ritual abuse and mind control began coming out to therapists, the groups had agreed on what kind of disinformation to spread, so that clients would be afraid to tell their therapists what had happened to them, and therapists would be afraid to work with these clients." [ ]
"We know that there is not one massive Satanic cult, but many different interrelated groups, including religious, military/political, and organized crime, using mind control on children and adult survivors. We know that there are effective treatments. We know that many of the paralyzing beliefs our clients lived by are the results of lies and tricks perpetrated by their abusers. — Alison Miller

Therein lies the social significance of art: It is constantly at work educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is more lacking. The unsatisfied yearning of the artist reaches back to the primordial image in the unconscious, which is best fitted to compensate the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the present. The artist seizes on this image and, in raising it from deepest unconsciousness, he brings it into relation with conscious values, thereby transforming it until it can be accepted by the minds of his contemporaries according to their powers. — Carl Jung

Paradoxically, our imperial global Anglo-American language is dull with the glitter of its own decay. In response, the new meta- physical poet might consider the following cleansing strategies: keep faith with the canonical writers of the past, study Homeric Greek, excavate etymologies, embrace threatened languages, practice the fine art of translation, listen regularly to the musical flow of the breath and the beat of the heart, switch off the television, become a votary of silence.
Here lies the beginning of freedom. — Peter Abbs

After all perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent. — Albert Camus

Our memories are convenient lies we create, cribbing images from others' experiences. We discard the personal specifics which don't conform to the ideal conventional beauty created by art directors and cinematographers. — Damian Loeb

When my words are concealed
With lies and disguises, truth and beyond
Insecurities in the veil of trust
Betrayal in bounds of lies
It's just the charm of words darling
Giving the illusion of happiness inside misery — Irum Zahra

I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies. — Le Corbusier

Rare and powerful harmonies exist,
Shaping both scent and contour in a flower.
Thus brilliance lies unseen by us until,
Beneath the chisel, it blazes in the diamond.
And thus do images of fleeting vision,
Drifting above like cloud-forms in the sky,
Once turned to stone live on from age to age,
Held always in a faultless, polished phrase.
("A Sonnet To Form") — Valery Bryusov

But if what can exist does exist, is memory invention or is invention memory? — Jeanette Winterson

And in fact the artist's experience lies so unbelievably close to the sexual, to its pain and its pleasure, that the two phenomena are really just different forms of one and the same longing and bliss. And if instead of "heat" one could say "sex";- sex in the great, pure sense of the word, free of any sin attached to it by the Church, - then his art would be very great and infinitely important. His poetic power is great and as strong as a primal instinct; it has its own relentless rhythms in itself and explodes from him like a volcano. — Rainer Maria Rilke

In Caverna lies were an art and everybody was an artist, even young children. — Frances Hardinge

The truth about any artist, however terrible, is better than the silence ... I know many writers fight fanatically to keep their published self separate from their private reality ... But I've always thought of that as something out of our social, time-serving side; not our true artistic ones. I don't see how the "lies" we write and the "lies" we live can or should be divided. They are seamless, one canvas, for me. While we live we can keep them apart, but not command the future to do the same. The outrage some Thomas Hardy fans have shown over all the revelations about the private man seems to me hypocritical in the extreme. They hugely enrich our understanding of him ... I have had to convince a number of friends and relatives that the kindest act to the [writer] is remembering them - and that all art comes from a human being, not out of mysterious thin air.
(Letter to Jo Jones, September 15, 1980, arguing for the preservation of John Collier's personal papers) — John Fowles

THE ART OF DRAWING YOU
In a bed by the Gulf of Corinth, a woman contemplates by firelight the profile of her sleeping lover.
On the wall, his shadow flickers.
The lover, who lies by her side, will leave. At dawn he will leave to war, to death. And his shadow, his traveling companion, will leave with him and with him will die.
It is still dark. The woman takes coal out of the embers and draws on the wall the outline of his shadow.
Those lines will not leave.
They will not embrace her, and she knows it. But they will not leave. — Eduardo Galeano

The picture is not a documentary, ... It's a drama that has to be crafted. Reality is not art. You have to make choices when you're trying to make something work. And the choices we make I think are accurate. There aren't any lies in it. There are assumpt — Mark Rydell

The first source of art, then, is akin to the display of colors and plumage on the male animal in mating time; it lies in the desire to adorn and beautify the body. And just as self-love and mate-love, overflowing, pour out their surplus of affection upon nature, so the impulse to beautify passes from the personal to the external world. The soul seeks to express its feeling in objective ways, through color and form; art really begins when men undertake to
beautify things. — Will Durant

I look at the human sciences as poetic sciences in which there is no objectivity, and I see film as not being objective, and cinema verite as a cinema of lies that depends on the art of telling yourself lies. If you're a good storyteller then the lie is more true than reality, and if you're a bad one, the truth is worse than a half lie. — Jean Rouch

In truth, nothing could be more opposed to the purely aesthetic interpretation and justification of the world which are taught in this book than the Christian teaching, which is, and wants to be, only moral and which relegates art, every art, to the realm of lies; with its absolute standards, beginning with the truthfulness of God, it negates, judges, and damns art. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The secret of the nobility and beauty of great ladies lies in the art with which they can shed their veils. In such situations, they become like ancient statues. If they kept the merest scarf on, they would be lewd. Your bourgeois woman will always try to cover her nakedness. — Honore De Balzac

In all societies, public rhetoric involves some measure of lying, and history -- political history and art history -- is made when someone effectively confronts the lie. But in really scary societies all public conversation is an exercise in using words to mean their opposites -- in describing the brave as traitorous, the weak as frightening, and the good as bad -- and confronting these lies is the most scary and lonely thing a person can do. — Masha Gessen

From lips indifferent of her death I heard,
Indifferently I listened to it, too,'
were echoing in my heart. O youth, youth! little dost thou care for anything; thou art master, as it were, of all the treasures of the universe - even sorrow gives thee pleasure, even grief thou canst turn to thy profit; thou art self-confident and insolent; thou sayest, 'I alone am living - look you!' - but thy days fly by all the while, and vanish without trace or reckoning; and everything in thee vanishes, like wax in the sun, like snow ... . And, perhaps, the whole secret of thy charm lies, not in being able to do anything, but in being able to think thou wilt do anything; lies just in thy throwing to the winds, forces which thou couldst not make other use of; in each of us gravely regarding himself as a prodigal, gravely supposing that he is justified in saying, 'Oh, what might I not have done if I had not wasted my time! — Ivan Turgenev

The foreground in a picture is always unattractive ... Art demands that the interest of the canvas should be placed in the far distance, where lies take refuge, those dreams which blossom out of fact and are man's only love. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

She knows not loves that kissed her She knows not where. Art thou the ghost, my sister, White sister there, Am I the ghost, who knows? My hand, a fallen rose, Lies snow-white on white snows, and takes no care. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

The end (goal) of art is to figure the hidden meaning of things and not their appearance; for in this profound truth lies their true reality, which does not appear in their external outlines. — Joseph Conrad

Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated; when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas; the interest of science lies in the art of making science. — Paul Valery

Ephemeral work made outside, for and about a day, lies at the core of my art and its making must be kept private. — Andy Goldsworthy

In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, even though it be covertly, and by snatches. — Herman Melville

Art has no place in modern life. It will continue to exist as long as there is a mania for the romantic and so long as there are people who love beautiful lies and deception ... Every modern cultured man must wage war against art, as against opium ... Photograph and be photographed. — Alexander Rodchenko

An artist requires the upkeep of creative solitude. An artist requires the healing of time alone. Without this period of recharging, our artist becomes depleted. Until we experience the freedom of solitude, we cannot connect authentically. We may be enmeshed, but we are not encountered. Art lies in the moment of encounter. We meet our truth and we meet ourselves and we meet our self-expression. — Julia Cameron

Every man, every art, has its hypocrisy. The world is fed with little and many lies. — Romain Rolland

Every day in my consultancy, I meet men and women who are out of their minds. That is, they have not the slightest idea who they really are or what it is that matters to them. The question 'How shall I live?' is not one I can answer on prescription. — Jeanette Winterson

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on. — Havelock Ellis

Our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits have long been at work, and it is the task of art to undo this work of theirs, making us travel back in the direction from which we have come to the depths where what has really existed lies unknown within us. — Marcel Proust

Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment in a bachelor, and second-nature in a married man. — Helen Rowland

The building is a national tragedy - a cross between a concrete candy box and a marble sarcophagus in which the art of architecture lies buried. — Ada Louise Huxtable

[Propaganda] must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect ... The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. — Adolf Hitler

For all the talk about the merging of film and video game, and for all its inevitability, perhaps the secret of true convergence lies not in an external reality , but in an internal truth: What kids seek from video games is what we all seek from our own distractions--be they movies, radio, comic books, literature, or art: an escape from the mundane to the sublime, where our imaginations make of us heroes, lovers, warriors, and gods. — Devin C. Griffiths

Something therefore always remains and sticks from the most imprudent of lies, a fact which all bodies and individuals concerned in the art of lying in this world know only too well, and therefore they stop at nothing to achieve this end. — Adolf Hitler

The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies. — Franz Kafka

Progress is not one of those floating comparatives, so beloved of our friends in advertising, we need a context, a perspective. What are we better than? Who are we better than? Examine this statement: Most people are better off. Financially? socially? educationally? medically? spiritually? I dare not ask if you are happy? Are you happy? — Jeanette Winterson

How can we expect our children to know and experience the joy of giving unless we teach them that the greater pleasure in life lies in the art of giving rather than receiving. — James Cash Penney

This is the art of courage: to see things as they are and still believe that the victory lies not with those who avoid the bad, but those who taste, in living awareness, every drop of the good. — Victoria Lincoln

The simple act of an ordinary courageous man is not to take part, not to support lies! Let that come into the world and even reign over it, but not through me. Writers and artists can do more: they can vanquish lies! ... Lies can stand up against much in the world, but not against art. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our epoch. — Honore De Balzac

Is it that the joy that comes from other people always risks sadness, because even when love doesn't fail, mortality enters in; is it that there is a place where sadness and joy are not distinct, where all emotion lies together, a sort of ocean into which the tributary streams of distinct emotions go, a faraway deep inside; is it that such sadness is only the side effect of art that describes the depths of our lives, and to see that described in all its potential for loneliness and pain is beautiful? — Rebecca Solnit

For those regarded as warriors ...
When engaged in combat, the vanquishing of thine enemy can be the warrior's only concern. Suppress all human emotion and compassion. Kill whoever stands in thy way, even if that be Lord God or Buddha himself. This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat. — Quentin Tarantino

Never let go of your appetite to go after new ideas, new experiences, and new adventures. Compete with yourself, not with others. Judge yourself on what is your personal best and you'll accomplish more than you could ever have imagined. Life stops for no one, so keep moving. Stay awake and stay alive. There's no AutoCorrect in life - think before texting the universe. Breaking the rules just for fun is too easy - the real challenge lies in perfecting the art of knowing which rules to accept and which to rewrite. The more you experiment, take risks, and make mistakes, the better you'll know yourself, the better you'll know the world, and the more focused you'll be. — Sophia Amoruso

Saddest of all are the woman who were brought up to believe that self-sacrifice is the highest female virtue. — Jeanette Winterson

...the rationale for the existence of literature lies precisely in its ability to work on issues that concern us deeply. And it does so in a way that keeps our motivation at its highest intensity. Literature is fuel for 'hot cognition.' One may presume that imaginative literature is a property that all human cultures possess and as such may provide humans with an evolutionary advantage. — Mette Hjort

Godhead here in hiding, whom I adore Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more, See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art — Thomas Aquinas

We are all the subjects of impressions, and some of use seek to convey the impressions to others. In the art of communicating impressions lies the power of generalizing without losing that logical connection of parts to the whole which satisfies the mind. — Camille Pissarro

A statue lies hid in a block of marble, and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter and removes the rubbish. The figure is in the stone; the sculptor only finds it. What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint, or the hero,
the wise, the good, or the great man,
very often lies hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred, and have brought to light. — Joseph Addison

War is like art. It paints a picture mixed with lies and truths in order to help one find something absolute. It brings out imagination. It brings out intelligence. It brings out illumination. The art is worth dying for. The struggle is worth the reward, because even if cause looks futile now, the idea behind it has the power to bring liberation. Although it can be considered a necessary evil, it is a remissible good. War is like art, for it paints a picture of truth. — Lionel Suggs

One of the main causes of our artistic decline lies beyond doubt in the separation of art and science. — Gino Severini

Art belongs to all times and to all countries; its special benefit is precisely to be still living when everything else seems dying; that is why Providence shields it from too personal or too general passions, and grants it a patient and persevering organization, durable sensibility, and the contemplative sense in which lies invincible faith. — George Sand

That which is static and repetitive is boring. That which is dynamic and random is confusing. In between lies art. — John Locke

Why do we sacrifice so much energy to our art?
Not in order to teach others but to learn with them what our existence, our organism, our personal and repeatable experience have to give us; to learn to break down the barriers which surround us and to free ourselves from the breaks which hold us back, from the lies about ourselves which we manufacture daily for ourselves and for others; to destroy the limitations caused by our ignorance or lack of courage; in short, to fill the emptiness in us: to fulfill ourselves ... art is a ripening, an evolution, an uplifting which enables us to emerge from darkness into a blaze of light. — Jerzy Grotowski

What makes up a life; events or the recollection of events?
How much of recollection is invention?
Whose invention? — Jeanette Winterson

In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life. The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabbiness of the subject matter. — Azar Nafisi

If the painter wishes to see beauties that charm him, it lies in his power to create them, and if he wishes to see monstrosities that are frightful, ridiculous, or truly pitiable, he is lord and God thereof. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Contentment? Hmmmmmmmmm. That's a really deep one. It requires diving deep into the moment and bringing up that contentment which lies deep within us. You may want to put your life behind you so that it doesn't impede your way deeper. It's alright to do something really slowly if that's what it takes to do the thing you want to do. — Art Hochberg

There is always a multitude of reasons both in favor of doing a thing and against doing it. The art of debate lies in presenting them; the art of life lies in neglecting ninety-nine hundredths of them. — Hale White

Perhaps everything lies in knowing what words to speak, what actions to perform, and in what order and rhythm; or else someone's gaze, answer, gesture is enough; it is enough for someone to do something for the sheer pleasure of doing it, and for his pleasure to become the pleasure of others: at that moment, all spaces change, all heights, distances; the city is transfigured, becomes crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly. — Italo Calvino

In essence, art lies embedded in the conceptual leap between pieces, not in the pieces themselves. And simply put, there's a greater conceptual jump from one work of art to the next than from one work of craft to the next. The net result is that art is less polished - but more innovative - than craft. The differences between five Steinway grand pianos - demonstrably works of consummate craftsmanship - are small compared to the differences between the five Beethoven Piano concerti you might perform on those instruments. A — David Bayles

Art is not just about what's great or expensive or scandalous or famous. It's a mirror we hold up that looks different to everyone who sees it, and whose beauty lies as much in us, and our capacity to dream ... — Michael Kimmelman

But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not adistance of time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does not allow us to forget that the sun shone,
nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon. — Henry David Thoreau

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work. — John Milton

What the world thought made little difference. Rembrandt had to
paint. Whether he painted well or badly didn't matter; painting was the
stuff that held him together as a man. The chief value of art, Vincent, lies
in the expression it gives to the artist. Rembrandt fulfilled what he knew
to be his life purpose; that justified him. Even if his work had been
worthless, he would have been a thousand times more successful than if
he had put down his desire and become the richest merchant in
Amsterdam. (Mendes Da Costa — Irving Stone

In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility. — Robert McKee

Construction is the art of making a meaningful whole out of many parts. Buildings are witnesses to the human ability to construct concrete things. I believe that the real core of all architectural work lies in the act of construction. At the point in time concrete materials are assembled and erected, the architecture we have been looking for becomes part of the real world. — Peter Zumthor

Food and sex have been bound together for a long time. I guess this is due to the intimate connection between the two most powerful instincts that predominate in life: the instinct to survive and the instinct to multiply. Nourishment and sex give us a great sense of pleasure. Having the wisdom to satisfy both desires - for food and sex - is the art of living well. I truly believe that this wisdom lies within us all. — Ori Hofmekler

FAIR river! in thy bright, clear flow Of crystal, wandering water, Thou art an emblem of the glow Of beauty - the unhidden heart - The playful maziness of art In old Alberto's daughter; But when within thy wave she looks - Which glistens then, and trembles - Why, then, the prettiest of brooks Her worshipper resembles; For in his heart, as in thy stream, Her image deeply lies - His heart which trembles at the beam Of her soul-searching eyes. — Edgar Allan Poe

A large part of the art of instruction lies in making the difficulty of new problems large enough to challenge thought, and small enough so that, in addition to the confusion naturally attending the novel elements, there shall be luminous familiar spots from which helpful suggestions may spring. — John Dewey

The real self of an artiste lies in art, so when an artiste performs, all the pain, trauma and tension get released through art, be it dancing, painting, singing, writing or even martial arts. — Mrinalini Sarabhai

The art, the art of living, involves the act of creation. The work of art is nothing. It is only the tangible, visible evidence of a way of life, which, if it is not crazy is certainly different from the accepted way of life. The difference lies in the act, in the assertion of a will, and individuality. For the artist to attach himself to his work, or identify himself with it, is suicidal. An artist should be able not only to spit on his predecessor's art, or on all works of art, but on his own too. He should be able to be an artist all the time, and finally not be an artist at all, but a piece of art. — Henry Miller

In a poem, melody, or picture, we are forced with a mystery: quality in the metaphysical sense of the word. How could the difference between an original painting and its copy be explained by means of quantity? The original possesses the quality of beauty and 'every copy is ugly'. The difference does not arise from the fact that something has been added or taken away from the copy in the quantitative sense of the word; it lies in the personal touch between the artist and the work of art. Quality can only be 'in touch' with a personality. — Alija Izetbegovic

Trying every day to tell the truth is hard. There are harder things, of course - arguably, living with lies and meaninglessness, living in despair is harder, but it's hardship disguised as luxury and easier perhaps to grow accustomed to, since truth is usually the enemy of custom. There are harder things than writing, being President Obama, for instance, and having to deal with House Republicans, or trying to fix the leak at the Fukushima reactor, these are harder, but writing is hard. — Tony Kushner

Time: Change experienced and observed. Time measured by the angle of the turning earth as it rotates through its axis. The earth turning slowly on its spit under the fire of the sun. — Jeanette Winterson

The Guide says there is an art to flying", said Ford, "or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. — Douglas Adams

Lies, fictions and untrue suppositions can create new human truths which build technology, art, language, everything that is distinctly of Man. The word "stone" for instance is not a stone, it is an oral pattern of vocal, dental and labial sounds or a scriptive arrangement of ink on a white surface, but man pretends that it is actually the thing it refers to. Every time he wishes to tell another man about a stone he can use the word instead of the thing itself. The word bodies forth the object in the mind of the listener and both speaker and listener are able to imagine a stone without seeing one. All the qualities of stone can be metaphorically and metonymically expressed. "I was stoned, stony broke, stone blind, stone cold sober, stonily silent," oh, whatever occurs. More than that, a man can look at a stone and call it a weapon, a paperweight, a doorstep, a jewel, an idol. He can give it function, he can possess it. — Stephen Fry

Things rarely happen for a single reason. Even the cleverest and most skilled manipulators recognize that their real art lies in making use of that which they cannot predict. — Tom Clancy