Arts Council Quotes & Sayings

I'm on the New York State Council for the Arts now, and every so often some other member talks about sending notices to college English departments about some literary opportunity, and I say, Send them to the chemistry departments, send them to the zoology departments, send them to the anthropology departments and the astronomy departments and physics departments, and all the medical and law schools. That's where the writers are most likely to be. — Kurt Vonnegut

Cleveland is really good about recognizing its artists because of the Arts Council. — Mary Doria Russell

I haven't seen so much tippy-toeing around since the last time I went to the ballet. When members of the arts community were askedthis week about one of their biggest benefactors, Philip Morris, and its requests that they lobby the New York City Council on the company's behalf, the pas de deux of self- justification was so painstakingly choreographed that it constituted a performance all by itself. — Anna Quindlen

I also believe in cigarettes, cholesterol, alcohol, carbon monoxide, masturbation, the Arts Council, nuclear weapons, the Daily Telegraph, and not properly labeling fatal poisons, but above all else, most of all, I believe in the one thing that can come out of people's mouths: vomit. — Dennis Potter

'The Look of Silence' is able to have a wide public release, although still not in cinemas. It's distributed by two government bodies, the National Human Rights Commission and the Jakarta Arts Council. — Joshua Oppenheimer

The Arts Council of England, in a 1998 report on 11 countries, found that Germany spent $85 per capita on the arts. The United States spent a shocking $6. And Canada, in its stubborn balance, spent $46 ... It's the Canadian way to be halfway between the Old and New worlds. — Michael Audain

I was the first Arts Council official in the archipelago to do something for what you might call indigenous music. — Michael Longley

Soccer is an art more central to our culture than anything the Arts Council deigns to recognize. — Germaine Greer

During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. — Douglas Adams

Jowell fell back on the same justification for funding the arts that the first chairman of the Arts Council, John Maynard Keynes, had deployed in 1945. Art was something produced by people with special skills, who set their own standards of excellence; they needed to be supported to do this, and the audience needed to be encouraged to appreciate this excellence, by being given subsidised access to it. And for all of Jowell's attempts to transcend instrumentalism, the purpose of culture continued to be to help the government 'to transform our society into a place of justice, talent and ambition where individuals can fulfil their true potential'.22 — Robert Hewison

My tax dollar, which goes to New York State Council on the Arts, is by and large only spent to fund people from the state of New York! And you want to be the cultural capital of the world? — Robert Wilson

If it takes you seven years to write each novel, you need a patron. And I would rather have my corporate self as my patron than any arts council or bestower of grants. — Mohsin Hamid

In 1968 the Arts Council managed to get a grant from the treasury to buy up a lot of derelict touring theatres and put them back in the hands of the local authorities. — Timothy West

Vogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe.
The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his 12-book epic entitled "My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles" when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save humanity, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.
The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of Redbridge, in the destruction of the planet Earth. Vogon poetry is mild by comparison. — Douglas Adams

We're under the Arts Council under the Minister for the Arts. The Minister for the Arts and the Minister for Industrial Development have great difficulty in agreeing over who should fund what in terms of film. — Ann Macbeth

I wanted to be with the men I admired rather than the Scottish Arts Council crowd, so I spent a lot of time in graveyards. You get less trouble from the dead. — Alexander Stoddart

If the (British) Arts Council give you money, they also tell you how to spend it. — Neville Marriner