Art And Play Quotes & Sayings

I think competition in any kind of activity like music, art, literature - anything that's not done with a timer - is actually impossible. So, in effect, what you're doing is you're entering the lottery. You're hoping that you play well (and that) you play your best on the day that you're heard, and you're hoping that the people who are judging will like what you do. — Emanuel Ax

I think from the time I was a kid I've been an entertainer. I've always had the ability to play characters. When I came to California, I was overwhelmed that you could do this and get paid for it, make a living on it, and be creative within this art form. — Matt Schulze

But we go out as a band because we enjoy each others company, first of all. And its the payoff for me, to go out and play my art and still play guitar, which is my life. — Peter Frampton

It is, perhaps more than anything else, the arrest of time which has taken place in a completed work of art that gives certain plays their feeling of depth and significance. — Tennessee Williams

My parents didn't have records, they didn't have radios, and they didn't listen to music. My grandmother was my main connection to art and music. She could play piano very well, and she had perfect pitch. — Gerard Way

Hollywood is a showman's paradise. But showmen make nothing; they exploit what someone else has made. The publisher and the play producer are showmen too; but they exploit what is already made. The showmen of Hollywood control the making - and thereby degrade it. For the basic art of motion pictures is the screenplay; it is fundamental, without it there is nothing. Everything derives from the screenplay, and most of that which derives is an applied skill which, however adept, is artistically not in the same class with the creation of a screenplay. — Raymond Chandler

If you're a new artist, practice your art and share it. Set up shop somewhere, whether it's a street corner or a coffee shop. I got my start in a coffee shop that didn't even have live music. I wanted to play in coffee shops that did have live music, but I didn't have an audience. — Jason Mraz

Well, of
course one must have concentration. Courage. Self-control. That goes
without saying. But more important than these, one must have ... I
don't know how to say it. One must be both a mathematician and a
poet. As though poetry were a science; or mathematics an art. One
must have an affection for proportion to play Go at all well.Ah ... what Go is to philosophers
and warriors, chess is to accountants and merchants. — Trevanian

The work of art still has something in common with enchantment: it posits its own, self-enclosed area, which is withdrawn from the context of profane existence, and in which special laws apply. Just as in the ceremony the magician first of all marked out the limits of the area where the sacred powers were to come into play, so every work of art describes its own circumference which closes it off from actuality. — Theodor W. Adorno

What is chess, do you think? Those who play for fun or not at all dismiss it as a game. The ones who devote their lives to it for the most part insist that it's a science. It's neither. Bobby Fischer got underneath it like no one before and found at its center, art. — Ben Kingsley

We play a show, and there's a hundred people, and people will say "You must miss playing to a thousand people." But I don't. I might miss playing. That's what I would miss, but I don't miss it, because I am playing. I feel completely fortunate to have this outlet for something I don't really feel like I have a choice in, to make music. I've got to make it. And the fact that people care enough to want to come see me make it, or buy a recording, or want to call me up to talk about it? Fuck, man, I think that is gravy. — Ian MacKaye

I made a conscious decision to take my life and career in a different direction. I started working on a play, and also, by attending Burning Man for several years, I was incredibly stimulated by the art there. I increasingly wanted to be a part of it, and focused on what I wanted to say as an artist. — Scott Cohen

When we experience moments of ecstasy-in play, in art, in sex-they come not as an exception, an accident, but as a taste of what life is meant to be ... Ecstasy is an idea, a goal, but it can be the expectation of every day. Those times when we're grounded in our body, pure in our heart, clear in our mind, rooted in our soul, and suffused with the energy, the spirit of life, are our birthright. It's really not that hard to stop and luxuriate in the joy and wonder of being. Children do it all the time. It's a natural human gift that should be at the heart of our lives. — Gabrielle Roth

Einstein is notmerely an artist in his moments of leisure and play, as a great statesman may play golf or a great soldier grow orchids. He retains the same attitude in the whole of his work. He traces science to its roots in emotion, which is exactly where art is also rooted. — Havelock Ellis

You are young men and not children. The idea is that art allows the child imprisoned inside the adult to come out to play and celebrate the world and its beauty." He said that art was intimately linked with immortality: a challenge to death and time, a celebration of life. — Sinan Antoon

What is the world? What is it for?
It is an art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the infinite. Assess it like prose, like poetry, like architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, delta blues, opera, tragedy, comedy, romance, epic. Assess it like you would a Faberge egg, like a gunfight, like a musical, like a snowflake, like a death, a birth, a triumph, a love story, a tornado, a smile, a heartbreak, a sweater, a hunger pain, a desire, a fufillment, a desert, a waterfall, a song, a race, a frog, a play, a song, a marriage, a consummation, a thirst quenched.
Assess it like that. And when you're done, find an ant and have him assess the cathedrals of Europe. — N.D. Wilson

I find I am more interested in the villain-type roles because they can be so much more complex than just the villain. I don't think anybody sees them as evil per se. They show how close we are to one another. It's an untapped area of art. And I think, physically, I'm not going to play the hero. — Shuler Hensley

Thus it is that thy joy in me is so full. Thus it is that thou hast come down to me. O thou lord of all heavens, where would be thy love if I were not?

Thou hast taken me as thy partner of all this wealth. In my heart is the endless play of thy delight. In my life thy will is ever taking shape.

And for this, thou who art the King of kings hast decked thyself in beauty to captivate my heart. And for this thy love loses itself in the love of thy lover, and there art thou seen in the perfect union of two. — Rabindranath Tagore

When we decided to go to Cuba to perform, we did it because we just wanted to build a bridge, you know, between Cuba and the rest of the community. And we just wanted to prove that music and art need to be over all ideology or way to think life, and we just wanted to go in there and play just because of love. — Juanes

One will only be free when one plays and one's society will become a piece of art". - Herbert Marcuse
"Play is a phenomenon of nature and has directed the course of the world from the beginning of time: the formation of matter, its organization into living structures as well as the social behavior of man. — Manfred Eigen

The Internet doesn't always play a great role for art, especially art in the street, as people take what they see for the final image of it. But the most interesting thing about street art is to see it for real, to understand what it means and where it's displayed. — JR

After dinner or lunch or whatever it was
with my crazy 12-hour night I was no longer sure what was what
I said, Look, baby, I'm sorry, but don't you realize that this job is driving me crazy? Look, let's give it up. Let's just lay around and make love and take walks and talk a little. Let's go to the zoo. Let's look at animals. Let's drive down and look at the ocean. It's only 45 minutes. Let's play games in the arcades. Let's go to the races, the Art Museum, the boxing matches. Let's have friends. Let's laugh. This kind of life like everybody else's kind of life: it's killing us. — Charles Bukowski

If one of our players gets his second foul in the first half, then he must come out of the game and not re-enter until the second half. To play defense and not foul is an art that must be mastered if you are going to be successful. — Chuck Daly

So yeah, how do I think of my environment and what happens with sound art? I love to play with the idea of elusive and intangible things. That could be psychological. It could be perceptual. It could be just the way your ears help you just navigate around. — DJ Spooky

Anatoli Tarasov, the guy that created the Soviet style of play, was a visionary. He was a creative thinker. He studied ballet and chess and art and read a lot. — Gabe Polsky

I'm from the South, and there's a different understanding of how to chop. There's a syllable play. It's a delicate art. Your accent has a lot to do with it. If you're from a certain area, words don't roll of your tongue as slick. — Yelawolf

For both art and the historical sciences are modes of experiencing in which our own understanding of existence comes directly into play. — Hans-Georg Gadamer

The two saddest moments of my life were when my mother died and when I was told I couldn't play football for the Colts anymore. — Art Donovan

Finally, gatekeepers still matter. Technology makes it easier for people to listen to any kind of music they like, but digital availability and ubiquity are steering them increasingly to the biggest hits, not the niches. Bloggers and podcasters and tweeters have shaken up purveyors of news, but not replaced them. Book publishers, art dealers and film producers will still play the biggest role in what gets bought, read, contemplated and listened to. — Daniel Franklin

All good art has contained both abstract and surrealist elements, just as it has contained both classical and romantic elements - order and surprise, intellect and imagination, conscious and unconscious. BOTH SIDES of the artist's personality must play their part. — Henry Moore

And then, I was thinking of doing a record just like starting with voice, because I did this one song that was just kind of a cappella, and I did it for this art piece I did where people could come and play music to go with a voice. — Kim Gordon

When the spirit of child's play enters into the creative process, it's a wonderful force and something to be nurtured. — Joni Mitchell

It is the form that allows a writer the greatest opportunity to explore human experience ... For that reason, reading a novel is potentially a significant act. Because there are so many varieties of human experience, so many kinds of interaction between humans, and so many ways of creating patterns in the novel that can't be created in a short story, a play, a poem or a movie. The novel, simply, offers more opportunities for a reader to understand the world better, including the world of artistic creation. That sounds pretty grand, but I think it's true. — Don DeLillo

See, if you put a musician in a place where he has to do something different from what he does all the time, then he can do that - but he's got to think differently in order to do it. He's got to play above what he knows - far above it. I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens. — Miles Davis

Conversation lets you be an artist every time you open your mouth--or shut it. As Robert Louis Stevenson said, "The most important art is to omit"; the key to being a master conversationalist is to listen at least as much as you talk. Just as the other arts include pauses in a dramatic play, white margins around printed text, and space between a singer's phrases, conversation is about silences as well as about words. — Margaret Shepherd

I saw Cheap Trick play 'In Color,' and it was awesome. — Art Alexakis

We're one of the last handmade art forms. There's no fast way to make plays. It takes just as long and is just as hard as it was a thousand years ago. — Steven Dietz

The city as a center where, any day in any year, there may be a fresh encounter with a new talent, a keen mind or a gifted specialist-this is essential to the life of a country. To play this role in our lives a city must have a soul-a university, a great art or music school, a cathedral or a great mosque or temple, a great laboratory or scientific center, as well as the libraries and museums and galleries that bring past and present together. A city must be a place where groups of women and men are seeking and developing the highest things they know. — Margaret Mead

Art is water, and just as humans are always close to water, for reasons of necessity (to drink, to wash, to flush away, to grow) as well as for reasons of pleasure (to play in, to swim in, to relax in front of, to sail upon, to suck on frozen, coloured and sweetened), so humans must always be close to art in all its incarnations, from the frivolous to the essential. Otherwise we dry up. — Yann Martel

They are of the dream time. I don't understand it, I can't say it in words. Everything dreams. The play of form, of being, is the dreaming of substance. Rocks have their dreams, and the earth changes ... But when the mind becomes conscious, when the rate of evolution speeds up, then you have to be careful. Careful of the world. You must learn the way. You must learn the skills, the art, the limits. A conscious mind must be part of the whole, intentionally and carefully
as the rock is part of the whole unconsciously. Do you see? Does it mean anything to you? — Ursula K. Le Guin

My daughter loves to do art stuff. As a father, I like to play with her. We break out the big pads of paper and the glitter and all the stuff. She likes to do what she likes to do. I want to do something, too. So I've just started using her same materials - a lot of crayons, a lot of sparkle, charcoal, pencils, markers and glue. — Stone Gossard

But Jace", Clary said. "Valentine taught him more than just fighting. He taught him languages, and how to play the piano"
"That was Jocelyn's influence." Sebastian said her name unwillingly, as if he hated the sound of it. "She thought Valentine ought to be able to talk about books, art, music ... not just killing things. He passed that on to Jace."
A wrought iron blue gate rose to their left. Sebastian ducked under it and beckoned Clary to follow him. She didn't have to duck but went after him, her hands stuffed into her pockets. "What about you?" she asked.
He held up his hands. They were unmistakably her mother's hands - dexterous, long-fingered, meant for holding a brush or a pen. "I learned to play the instruments of war, " he said, "and paint in blood. I am not like Jace. — Cassandra Clare

What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose-knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful, that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced, as such deposits so mysteriously do, into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life, and yet steady, tranquil compounds with the aloofness of a work of art. The main requisite, I think, on reading my old volumes, is not to play the part of a censor, but to write as the mood comes or of anything whatever; since I was curious to find how I went for things put in haphazard, and found the significance to lie where I never saw it at the time. — Virginia Woolf

Depression gave me more then just a brooding introspection. It gave me humor, it gave me a certain what-a-fuck-up-I-am shtick to play with when the worst was over..the side effects, the by products of depression, seems to keep me going. I had developed a persona that could be extremely melodramatic and entertaining. It had, at times, all the selling points of madness, all the aspects of performance art. I was always able to reduce whatever craziness I'd experienced into the perfect antidote, the ideal cocktail party monologue...I thought this ability, to tell away my personal life as if it didn't belong to me, to be queerly chatty and energetic at moments that most people found inappropriate, was what my friends liked about me. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

I made my performance debut in New York City downtown on the Lower East Side in college doing awkward performance art as a go-go dancer at Lady Starlight's Party. And I never thought that my love for mediocre performance art and bad mime would ever come to use in my career as an actor. But my fantasies came true and I got to play Maureen in Rent. — Annaleigh Ashford

Don't let society's labels
hold you back. If you have a
true passion for something
whether its sports, art,
science, etc ... don't believe
anyone who says you can't do
it because you're a girl. If you
want to play baseball, hockey,
or football, don't let anyone
tell you that you can't. If you
want to play with Hot Wheel
cars and Legos, then do it.
Only you are the boss of you — Alison G. Bailey

Math is the beautiful, rich, joyful, playful, surprising, frustrating, humbling and creative art that speaks to something transcendental. It is worthy of much exploration and examination because it is intrinsically beautiful, nothing more to say. Why play the violin? Because it is beautiful! Why engage in math? Because it too is beautiful! — James Tanton

Botvinnik's right! When he says such things, then he's right. Usually, I prefer not to study chess but to play it. For me chess is more an art than a science. It's been said that Alekhine and I played similar chess, except that he studied more. Yes, perhaps, but I have to say that he played, too. — Mikhail Tal

Years later, as a professor, Martin would try to find the words to articulate the power of togetherness in a world where togetherness had been corrupted -- and to explore the effect of the music, the surprising lengths the people had gone to to hear it and to play it, as evidence that music, and art in general, are basic requirements of the human soul. Not a luxury but a compulsion. He will think of it every time he goes to a museum or a concert or a play with a long line of people waiting to get inside. — Jessica Shattuck

Cooking is like playing a violin. The bow is a tool used to play, as is the knives and other tools you use to prepare. (a chef's knife is even held in the same manner) Spices are the notes used in the score. The way the food is cooked and prepared is the rhythm and tempo. The ingredients are the violin themselves, ready to be played upon. The finished dish is the music played to its best melody. All of these things must be applied together at the right pace, manner, and time in order to create a flavourful rush of artwork and beauty. — Jennifer Megan Varnadore

In general, I don't like to blame the creators. They are making work that appeals to them and the people in the room with them. They are making something that is, at some level, genuine. But the distributors, the networks that bring art to the population, they are the ones who ensure that there's a flattening and narrowing. The younger me may have sat up all night with bandmates raging against Puffy or DMX or whoever, but the fact is that they were never the problem. The problem was that someone in the corporate chain of command felt that there was a need to play those songs fourteen times a day and to eliminate alternatives. — Ahmir Questlove Thompson

You cannot play for safety and make art. — Lucille Clifton

Don't play with your kills. Don't go for the one-thrust beautiful finish. Cut someone twenty times and let them collapse from blood loss - then finish them. Don't make it beautiful. You aren't making art, you're making corpses. — Brent Weeks

To stay cheerful when involved in a gloomy and exceedingly responsible business is no inconsiderable art: yet what could be more necessary than cheerfulness? Nothing succeeds in which high spirits play no part. Only excess of strength is proof of strength. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The two of us locked up our own little secrets from the real world. We had experienced countless sleepless nights when we would share our fears, our worries, and our passions; when we would gossip about the school and the other girls. We had played too many pranks and snuck out more than enough times to be expelled if the teachers ever found out. We were professionals at the art of being discreet; however, we had never found sneaking out of a residence necessary, especially when the reason was not to play a prank. — Erica Sehyun Song

Jazz vision is the fusion of music and art a real paradox of same-yet different. Here we play in exchanges, like the hardness of the key of c# major and from the softness of Db major - capturing, reflecting and improvising. — Barbara Januszkiewicz

So go on and play, and if you make a mistake, make it loud so you won't make it next time. — Art Blakey

I don't listen to punk any more, unless it's right before I play. Not that I don't like it, it's nostalgic. But, it's for kids and it should be ... it's not art, it's expression. — Tom DeLonge

When I was a little kid wanting to play music, it was because of people like Pete Johnson, Huey Smith, Allen Toussaint, Professor Longhair, James Booker, Art Neville ... there was so many piano players I loved in New Orleans. Then there was guys from out of town that would come cut there a lot. There was so many great bebop piano players, so many great jazz piano players, so many great Latin piano players, so many great blues piano players. Some of those Afro-Cuban bands had some killer piano players. There was so many different things going on musically, and it was all of interest to me. — Dr. John

Anger and jealousy's all that he sells us, he's content when you're under his thumb. Madmen oppose him, but your kindness throws him, to survive it you play deaf and dumb. — Bob Dylan

The arts of speech are rhetoric and poetry. Rhetoric is the art of transacting a serious business of the understanding as if it were a free play of the imagination; poetry that of conducting a free play of the imagination as if it were a serious business of the understanding. — Immanuel Kant

Unlike with any other art form, filmmakers have this unique web of festivals. There are hundreds. It is a democratic system in which you submit films, and if they are good enough, they play. The only barrier to entry is the submission fee. — Jason Reitman

In Harlan, Kentucky, we told stories the way some people play music ... In the mountains, storytelling is truly an art form, and as much recreation as communication. — Maxine Cheshire

Thou art seeking Christ, close not those eyes, turn not away thy face from Calvary's streaming tree: now that Satan hinders thee, it is because the night is almost over, and the day-star begins to shine. Brethren, ye who are most molested, most sorrowfully tried, most borne down, yours is the brighter hope: be now courageous; play the man for God, for Christ, for your own soul, and yet the day shall come when you with your Master shall ride triumphant through the streets of the New Jerusalem, sin, death, and hell, captive at your chariot wheels, and you with your Lord crowned as victor, having overcome through the blood of the Lamb. May God bless dear friends now present. I do not know to whom this sermon may be most suitable, but I believe it is sent especially to certain tried saints. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Cooking is work that is traditionally done by working-class people. The work itself is not glamorous. It's repetitive, and it's a lot closer to factory work than art, whatever level you're doing it at. Certainly chefs are used to living like rock 'n' rollers to some extent, inasmuch as we get a lot of those fringe benefits without having to learn how to play guitar. — Anthony Bourdain

What are you? What am I? Those are the questions that constantly persecute and torment me and perhaps also play some part in my art. — Max Beckmann

The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live
undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are
my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks
we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly. — Oscar Wilde

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

I want to be an improviser, and I've worked very hard at that. It's an art. You don't just play whatever comes into your head; you have to be very deliberate about what you do. — Neil Peart

I'm still totally going out and sleeping on people's floors so I can play a house show and give away music. Of course I would. That's how I started. All that sort of stuff reminds you to stay true to the essence of what art is about. — Geoff Rickly

Some part of me knew that I could play this part well, or better than well. But I was almost afraid to play it. The line between stage and life was so fragile here that I felt a risk of losing myself somehow. — J.B. Cheaney

I think great art should play a part in the ordinary man's life, don't you? It can make his existence so much richer and more meaningful. — Philip K. Dick

Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you don't feel the effort of the author, so that they shine and bubble and rise and fall, is very, very hard to do. Whereas you can sit at the piano and just play and feel you're making art. — Stephen Sondheim

They were all employed full time as actors in a play they understood, that any human being anywhere could understand and applaud." "So life became a work of art," I marveled. — Kurt Vonnegut

Thus God himself was too kind to remain idle and began to play the game of signatures signing his likeness unto the world: therefore I chance to think that all nature and the graceful sky are symbolized in the art of Geometria. — Johannes Kepler

Love, sex, food, friendship, art, play, beauty and the simple pleasure of a cup of tea are all well and good, but never forget that God/the universe is determined to kill you by whatever means necessary. — Chuck Lorre

I don't play the lottery. I don't care what my horoscope says. I think most things about the world could be improved if people thought more about what they're doing. When someone gets upset with their computer, I tend to side with the computer. I think art is overrated, and bridges are underrated. In fact, I don't understand why bridges aren't art. It seems to me they're penalized for having a use. If I make a bridge that ends in midair, that's a sculpture. But put it between two landmasses and let it ferry two hundred thousand cars per day and it's infrastructure. That makes no sense. — Max Barry

The Majesty guitar symbolizes the very reason why I am so proud to be a Music Man artist. I had the idea for this guitar a couple of years ago but it is because of their innovative spirit and dedication to the art of guitar building that it is now a reality. I am so grateful that I am able to collaborate with the best guitar company on the planet and so incredibly proud that together we have created what is to me, the perfect musical instrument for guitar players. I really hope you get a chance to play one and am confident that you will feel the same! — John Petrucci

Sometimes I'll drive around for months despair, nothing, nothing, then suddenly I will see something that seizes me ... a shape, a combination of shapes, a play of light or shadows and I send up a prayer because I know I have the germ of a picture. — Jeffrey Smart

In the early eighties, there were a lot of artists involved with the music scene. All those young artists, before their careers took off, were into music. Robert Longo used to play some guitar. He had a band for a while. Basquiat had a band. I mean, people were always trying to mix music and art - in fact, I'm guilty of it myself. — Kim Gordon

I go stay a week in these little towns that don't have an art outlet and ... go to the schools and play some of the old Texas music, sort of 'go through the Texas country roots' is what they call it. — Johnny Gimble

Whether I moved people to throw punches or cry, I did that through my art and what I do. I would never take that experience away to race against a speedometer. Or play on a team. — Johnny Weir

Art is about play and about transcendent meanings, not reducible to politics. — Rachel Kushner

Art thou in misery, brother? Then I pray Be comforted. Thy grief shall pass away. Art thou elated? Ah, be not too gay; Temper thy joy: this, too, shall pass away. Art thou in danger? Still let reason sway, And cling to hope: this, too, shall pass away. Tempted art thou? In all thine anguish lay One truth to heart: this, too, shall pass away. Do rays of loftier glory round thee play? Kinglike art thou? This, too, shall pass away! Whate'er thou art, wher'er thy footsteps stray, Heed these wise words: This, too, shall pass away. — Paul Hamilton Hayne

Everyone has doors in the living room of their lives that they assume are locked. Doors that lead to artistic expression. People say "I have no talent
I can't dance or sing or paint or write poetry or play an instrument." More often than not the doors are not locked, just closed. One may turn the handle, open the door and pass through into a larger life space. — Robert Fulghum

The world doesn't need to be fixed,it only needs to be balanced.And the art of balance demands you tread lightly,not leap ahead in a continual frenzy.The art of balance demands you know your designated role in the game of life,not start muscling in on everyone else's.The art of balance demands knowledge of timelessness,of birth and death and rebirth.The art of balance demands you know the world cannot be fixed it must be endured. It must simply forever be kept in a splendid play. — Tarun J. Tejpal

education and money. I go to church with the kids for the same reason Genie and I play our grandchildren classical music and litter the floors and chairs all over our home with open art books. Jack, age three, eats his lunch with a big Goya book propped in front of him asking for the — Frank Schaeffer

Music is the one art we all have inside. We may not be able to play an instrument, but we can sing along or clap or tap our feet. Have you ever seen a baby bouncing up and down in the crib in time to some music? When you think of it, some of that baby's first messages from his or her parents may have been lullabies, or at least the music of their speaking voices. All of us have had the experience of hearing a tune from childhood and having that melody evoke a memory or a feeling. The music we hear early on tends to stay with us all our lives. — Fred Rogers

The one charm of the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it. If they were allowed their own way, every comedy would have a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in a farce. They are charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of art. — Oscar Wilde

But it is not time constraints alone that produce such fragmented and discontinuous language. When a television show is in process, it is very nearly impermissible to say, "Let me think about that" or "I don't know" or "What do you mean when you say ... ?" or "From what sources does your information come?" This type of discourse not only slows down the tempo of the show but creates the impression of uncertainty or lack of finish. It tends to reveal people in the act of thinking, which is as disconcerting and boring on television as it is on a Las Vegas stage. Thinking does not play well on television, a fact that television directors discovered long ago. There is not much to see in it. It is, in a phrase, not a performing art. But television demands a performing art. — Neil Postman

Drue [Langlois] and I started making music together before we started the Art Lodge, so I guess musical collaboration came first. The music we made, and our performances, always had a visual component. I could never play an instrument, so these other elements compensated for that a little. — Michael Dumontier

The 10 or 12 artists I have known really well all my life are at least as competitive as professional athletes. They may express it in slightly different terms, but you look at the Jackson Pollocks et al., and they are as interested in wall space in the galleries as Joe Montana is in the percentage of completed passes. So the notion that symphonic conducting, or stage play, or pure art, is not a competitive business is real bullshit. — Tom Peters

Nature to all things fixed the limits fit
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.
As on the land while here the ocean gains.
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away
One science only will one genius fit,
So vast is art, so narrow human wit
Not only bounded to peculiar arts,
But oft in those confined to single parts
Like kings, we lose the conquests gained before,
By vain ambition still to make them more
Each might his several province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand. — Alexander Pope

My mom is a painter and an artist. She would play music, and she always had very good taste in music, fashion, and art. She was also a young single mom, so I think she had really good style; she was really free ... just really inspiring in her own way and allowed me to find the direction I wanted to take in my life. — Ruby Rose

The one thing you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can. The moment that you feel that just possibly you are walking down the street naked ... that's the moment you may be starting to get it right. — Neil Gaiman

Art begs you to notice it. Why? Because art is God's way of saying hello. So pay attention to poetry. Pay attention to music. Pay attention to paintings and sculptures and photo exhibits and ballets and plays. Don't let all this go unnoticed. Your world is shouting out to you, revealing something intrinsically glorious about itself. Listen carefully. Love art, the way art loves life. — Neale Donald Walsch

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. — Yvon Chouinard

It was shameless how life made fun of one; it was a joke, a cause for weeping! Either one lived and let one's senses play, drank full at the primitive mother's breast - which brought great bliss but was no protection against death; then one lived like a mushroom in the forest, colorful today and rotten tomorrow. Or else one put up a defense, imprisoned oneself for work and tried to build a monument to the fleeting passage of life - then one renounced life, was nothing but a tool; one enlisted in the service of that which endured, but one dried up in the process and lost one's freedom, scope, lust for life...
Ach, life made sense only if one achieved both, only if it was not split by this brittle alternative! To create, without sacrificing one's senses for it. To live, without renouncing the mobility of creating. Was that impossible? — Hermann Hesse

If you study the history of mankind, it seems to be a history of violence. Certainly the history of art, whether you look at paintings or movies or plays or whatever, is just a litany of murder and death. — Ethan Hawke

Play, creativity, art, spontaneity, all these experiences are their own rewards and are blocked when we perform for reward or punishment, profit or loss. — Stephen Nachmanovitch