Arty Quotes & Sayings

First I put on what I thought of as my 'artistic' outfit, a green smock dress with huge amber beads stitched into it. I imagined the kind of people who went to concerts might be quite arty and flamboyant. Will and Nathan both stared at me as I entered the living room.

'No,' said Will, flatly.

'That looks like something my mum would wear,' said Nathan.

'You never told me your mum was Nana Mouskouri,' Will said. — Jojo Moyes

The reason I did fashion was it was the only way to get paid to do anything creative. You couldn't support yourself as an 'artist' - I hate that word. The only way you could be 'arty' was as a fashion photographer, because it still had a certain amount of integrity involved. — David Bailey

In the past, my aspirations were as arty as they could get, and I'm really embarrassed by it. — Michael Lehmann

Artemis took a chance on some calculated sarcasm. "Really, Spiro. Did you think I would attempt a break-in? Perhaps you thought I would fly in here with my fairy friends and magic your box away?" Spiro laughed. "You can bring all the fairy friends you like, Arty-boy. Short of a miracle that Cube is staying right where it is. — Eoin Colfer

Arty. To me the word's got as much venom associated with it as 'wacky'. — Alex Kapranos

You just want to know that you're all right. You just want to feel all right." And now he dives into the sneer. Arty's sneer could flay a rhino. "That's all you need other people's love for! — Katherine Dunn

We were these arty punks from Hollywood. I considered myself an intellectual. — Flea

He had Oly letter a little card that he taped on his wall. The thing read, 'The only liars bigger than the quack are the quack's patients.' Arty used to just keep me in stitches. Eleven years old he was then. — Katherine Dunn

I got a random tattoo the other day. It's a red triangle, which makes everyone think I'm arty, which I'm not. I used to draw red triangles all the time. It must mean something - maybe I don't know it yet. But I'll figure it out. — Ellie Goulding

Shit now is the color white folks are afraid of. Shit is the presence of death, not some abstract-arty character with a scythe but the stiff and rotting corpse inside the whiteman's warm and private own asshole, which is getting pretty intimate. That's what the toilet is for. You see many brown toilets? Nope, toilet's the color of gravestones, classical columns of mausoleums, that white emblems the very emblem of Odorless and Official death. — Thomas Pynchon

I think people should be proud of the work they do, whatever it is. I have this other arty side that loves creating homes. I can be happy going to the hardware store. — Aida Turturro

Well, I certainly was exposed to and learned to appreciate the work of great directors early on. As a kid, my mother used to take me to see really interesting arty films in Los Angeles. — Jodie Foster

I seem to have been able to make a career out of doing what I feel like doing, so why not keep doing it? What's corrupting is wanting to be more important. You want to be more arty - you get your identity from that. Or you get your identity out of making more money. — Jane Campion

Take down Arty and Chick and Papa and the twins, and all that's left of the Jar Kin, and, by then, Lily and me. Open our metal jars and pour all the Binewski dust together into that big battered loving cup that first held only Grandpa B. Bolt us to the hood of your traveling machine and take us on the road again. — Katherine Dunn

Don't hate me forever, Arty," whispered Holly. "I couldn't bear that. — Eoin Colfer

I use my awards as doorstops. Others are in the office or in little cubbyholes in our library - they go between the books, because they actually look like arty pieces. — Helen McCrory

I feel more comfortable in a place like Brighton - a town, with one centre, one bus station, one train station. And there are so many arty, creative people, and things are less rushed, less stressed. — Gabrielle Aplin

Some of us, I think, us small, pompous arty ones probably read too much George Steiner and kind of got the idea that we were entering to this kind of post-culture age and that we'd better do something postmodernist - quickly, before somebody else did. — David Bowie

Atheist Jews double crossers stole our [black people's] secrets ... They give us to worship a dead Jew and not ourselves ... Selling fried potatoes and people, the little arty bastards talking arithmetic they sucked from the arab's head. — Amiri Baraka

I wanted to combine science and photography in a sensible, unemotional way. Some people's ideas of scientific photography is just arty design, something pretty. That was not the idea. The idea was to interpret science sensibly, with good proportion, good balance and good lighting, so we could understand it. — Berenice Abbott

People are afraid of you, Arty. Girls are terrified of you. You're a fifteen-year-old in a bespoke suit, and nobody died. — Eoin Colfer

Sometimes the independent movies can get a little too arty-farty. You watch the IFC Channel and you want to throw up. You don't always have to take things so serious, you know. — Mickey Rourke

And me all the while having to pee - coughing into the mike when my throat was tired and raw - eyes stinging and lips and chin crumpling in grief at his anger. The sweet tinkle of Electra on the bass and Iphy on the treble with Mama's voice counting, "One and two and ... " as the twins had their piano lesson inside the trailer. The gurgle and hum of the pumps that filtered my brother Arty's "Aqua Boy" tank. And the dim round moon of baby Fortunato's face peering at me from the dark of the risers above Papa. — Katherine Dunn

I would really like to have had the guts and the energy and so on to be able to write about, you know, people having battles with the DHSS. But I ... I haven't. They're dull things. I mean, I'm an arty person. OK, I write overblown, purple, self-indulgent prose. So fucking what? — Angela Carter

The Waves is an extraordinary achievement ... It is trembling on the edge. A little less - and it would lose its poetry. A little more - and it would be over into the abyss, and be dull and arty. It is her greatest book. — E. M. Forster

I was always a bit arty-farty as a boy. 'Come on, Mr. Arty-Farty,' my sister used to say to me. — Nicolas Roeg

The rosy enthusiasms and hopes of 1925," Alain Locke said ten years later, "were. . . cruelly
deceptive mirages." The ghetto was revealed in the thirties as "a nasty, sordid corner into which
black folk are herded - a Harlem that the social worker knew all along but had not been able to
dramatize. . .
There is no cure or saving magic in poetry and art
for. . . precarious marginal
employment, high mortality rates, civic neglect," Locke concluded. It was this Harlem, the
neighborhood not visible "from the raucous interior of a smokefilled, jazzdrunken cabaret," the
Harlem hidden by the "bright surface. . . of. . . night clubs, cabaret tours and. . . arty magazines,"
that was devastated by the Depression. — Gilbert Osofsky

Younger women are willing to go out with high status males. If you look at the kind of women Salman Rushdie attracts, they tend to be intelligent, arty types. For her, it's a kudos thing. The man just wants a good-looking girl because he imagines that when his friends see him, they'll all think, 'Gosh I wish I was him.' — Mark Barrowcliffe

I enjoy getting to be arty and quirky and weird and all the things that I don't have that much choice with. You just sort of use what you got. — Paul Reubens

Arty farty, you'll never fool your Aunt, who knew you picked your nose and wet your pants. — Ray Davies

What's with the serum?"
I don't know, but it sounds ominous. We better put a telepathic direction finder on Benway. The man's not to be trusted. Might do almost anything ... Turn a massacre into a sex orgy ... "
Or a joke."
Precisely. Arty type ... No principles ... — William S. Burroughs

Because I was a diminutive, arty kid, I felt like a misfit in high school - but who doesn't? — Garry Trudeau

My tastes in all things lean towards the arty and boring. I like sports documentaries about Scrabble players, bands that play quiet, unassuming music, and TV shows that win awards. In that way, I am an elitist snob. — Michael Ian Black

I know what dissipate means, Arty. I'm not three, for heaven's sake. — Eoin Colfer

There is something about dance that is actually a great tension. There is something that is incredibly freeing about dancing for dancers who do it. They tend to be really arty and interesting people in real life. At the same time, they have an incredibly rigorous training schedule. — George Nolfi

Identity is a bag and a gag. Yet it exists for me with all the force of a fatal disease. Obviously I am here, a mind and a body. To say there's no proof my body exists would be arty and specious and if my mind is more ephemeral, less provable, the solution of being a writer with solid (touchable, tearable, burnable) books is as close as anyone has come to a perfect answer. — Judith Perelman Rossner

The only thing that shocks me is public interest in people who shouldn't be interesting at all, like Jade Goody. We've gone past Andy Warhol and all those clever, arty and witty things that were done and said in the sixties ... the fifteen minutes, and so on. Now your celebrities don't have to do anything, they're just voted in. And that shocks me. — Marco Pirroni

My studio is not arty. It doesn't smell of turpentine, and I'm not knee-high in paper. — Robert Ingpen

trash fires gutter in steel canisters around the Market. The snow still falls and kids huddle over the flames like arthritic crows, hopping from foot to foot, wind whipping their dark coats. Up in Fairview's arty slum-tumble, someone's laundry has frozen solid on the line, pink squares of bedsheet standing out against the background dinge and the confusion of satellite dishes and solar panels. Some ecologist's eggbeater windmill goes round and round, round and round, giving a whirling finger to the Hydro rates. — William Gibson

I didn't know any actors growing up. My dad was a builder, and we didn't know any arty types. — Stephen Mangan

I suppose I just like being arty. That's all. Arty. — Peter Capaldi

I was a closet straight. I think I wanted to be gay because I thought it was arty and interesting. And also, I was phenomenally shy with girls. — Rupert Graves

I think there is status to having a house full of pretty things, to buying expensive paintings of seashells from her arty friends and spoons from Tiffany's. — E. Lockhart

Katherine Anne [Porter] treated them like favored nephews; she even cooked meals for them. Unfortunately, however, beneath Christopher's deference and flattery, there was a steadily growing aggression. By her implicit claim to be the equal of Katherine Mansfield and even Virginia Woolf, Katherine Anne had stirred up Christopher's basic literary snobbery. How dare she, he began to mutter to himself, this vain old frump, this dressed-up cook in her arty finery, how dare she presume like this! And he imagined a grotesque scene in which he had to introduce her and somehow explain her to Virginia, Morgan [Forster] and the others . . . [t]hus Katherine Anne became the first of an oddly assorted collection of people who, for various reasons, made up their minds that they would never see Christopher again. The others: Charlie Chaplin, Benjamin Britten, Cole Porter, Lincoln Kirstein. — Christopher Isherwood

Giving Papa time to think, as Arty put it, was like pumping random rounds into a fireworks factory. The odds favored dramatic results. — Katherine Dunn

I'm quite arty. I didn't know whether to become an artist or musician but I realised I could paint with music. All my songs have colours. — Ed Sheeran

And the truth is that I'm not, Ed, is what I wanted to tell you. I'm not arty like everyone says who doesn't know me, I don't paint, I can't draw, I play no instrument, I can't sing. I'm not in plays, I wanted to say, I don't write poems. I can't dance except tipsy at dances. I'm not athletic, I'm not a goth or a cheerleader, I'm not treasurer or co-captain. I'm not gay and out and proud, I'm not that kid from Sri Lanka, not a triplet, a prep, a drunk, a genius, a hippie, a Christian, a slut, not even one of those super-Jewish girls with a yarmulke gang wishing everyone a happy Sukkoth. I'm not anything, this is what I realized ... I like movies, everyone knows I do
I love them
but I will never be in charge of one because my ideas are stupid and wrong in my head. There's nothing different about that, nothing fascinating, interesting, worth looking at. — Daniel Handler

I went to a boarding school when I was 13, and it was a very arty school, so there was an opportunity for a lot more. I joined a band and so on. We would do concerts at school, and I would play cover tunes and thought, 'This is really great.' — Teddy Thompson

You don't rewrite it, censor it, or edit it, to suit some warped view you have of the past and your own present. — V.T. Davy

There's a side that I want to do just like really retarded arty films like parody, pretentious art films that kind of are supposed to have some deep meaning. — Andy Milonakis

I want a guy who is masculine, good with his hands and able to build stuff and who has survival skills. Facial hair is a big turn-on. Most of the kids I hang out with in New York are hipster arty types, but I like a stronger, more physically imposing man - like a lumberjack. — Chloe Sevigny

I don't care. He'll only be painting his own feelings for me, and I don't mind if he does that. I wouldn't have him touch me, not for anything. But if he thinks he can do anything with his owlish arty staring, let him stare. He can make as many empty tubes and corrugations out of me as he likes. It's his funeral. He hated you for what you said: that his tubified art is sentimental and self-important. But of course it's true. — D.H. Lawrence

Like, Mission Of Burma to me always sounded almost like they were part of the British Arty New Wave. I kind of like that. I like not being able to tell the difference. — Graham Coxon

Some fall from grace to get Picture- Perfect !!"(pp.73. "Arty Facts") — Ankita Kapoor

Mr youse needn't be so spry concernin questions arty each has his tastes but as for i i likes a certain party gimme the he-man's solid bliss for youse ideas i'll match youse a pretty girl who naked is is worth a million statues — E. E. Cummings

But I do nothing that I don't like, such as "inventing" up to the arty or "down" to the corny. I happen to relish a certain type of corn. What I think is the really dangerous approach is the "let's be artistic" attitude. I know that artistry just happens. — Fred Astaire

Today they are teaching the subject of art as a frill in school, partly due to intellectual preciousness that has crept into art departments with the making of the History of Art. Intellectualising places art on a pedestal only for the few, causing New Zealanders to revert to the invented snobbery that tends to ignore anything arty as exotic, unattainable, not wholesome. — Theresa Sjoquist

It's total bullshit. I hate it when people make sadness all deep and beautiful and, like- profound. That's the word it's not profound. It's not beautiful. It sucks. It sucks balls. I think it makes non-sad people feel better. Like, they think if must be a good thing to be sad, because you're getting all this insight into real life and pain or whatever. Like how people say tears are like rain. Fuck off. Tears are just tears and they make your eyes hurt and they won stop when you want them to and ugh you get all those arty photos of girls crying - it's always girls, have you noticed?- and it's so beautiful and tasteful and moving. When the reality is your face goes all blotchy and your nose runs and you can taste it every time you breathe'
'Taste what?'
'It. Pain. Sadness. I'm just saying that sadness isn't beautiful and if it looks that way, it's a lie. — Sara Barnard

I would love to do a movie naked; it would be beautiful. No one dares make that kind of film today. They did it in the 1930s in an arty way, so why not now? — Megan Fox

Introduction to bits. Things are going up on the curb, every few months. Maybe. Bottle of the inside of the lines of the landing, not as we can set of brightness. But the houses get repayed, man. Anywhere. There's nowhere else to be late at a number of me? But it's visible from the house. It's early evening, but it crackles and perhaps they own. It means that perhaps the result of bubbly waiting for a few moments. I have to flinch at the forthcoming disaster strikes. Nathan: He travels. While most of the hoarded seconds of the moon given flesh. Inanna is that they own. That which does the theme afterwards. They become bitter. Not a level on a few moments I see. Thank you. Yeah. Arty stuff. — Neil Gaiman

People scream at me, "Hey, let's party." I give off an I'm-crazy-and-I-want-to-arty-and-wrestle-you vibe. — Jack Black

My family don't watch a lot of what I do. Films are a bit too arty-farty for them, certainly the ones I do! — Samantha Morton

It is truly difficult to make a democracy. Democracy, like arty dream, is not made with spiritual words but with reflection and practice. It is not what I say that says I am a democrat, that I am not racist or machista but what I do. What I say must not be contradicted by what I do. It is what I do that bespeaks my faithfulness or not to what I say. — Paulo Freire

Above all, the photographs I use are not arty in any sense of the word. I think photography is dead as fine art; its only place is in the commercial world, for technical or information purposes. — Edward Ruscha

I've spent half my life on planes. I have a lot of love for New Zealand, though. That is where the really arty, whimsical side of the family resided - in Hobbitland. — Alice Englert

When a beautiful blonde asks, you don't say no. — V.T. Davy

I think the whole, like, cultural diversity and the arty side of London is really, really great. And how it's so historic as well. — Lily Allen

When I was in the middle of the 'Scott Pilgrim' series, and it was slowly becoming more popular, though still not financially solvent, I had this real bratty instinct to turn around and do something super arty and dark. I felt dismissed by comics culture, stuck in between the artcomix world and the nerdcomix world, and I was cranky about it. — Bryan Lee O'Malley

I'm an artist. I'm an artist and I'm going to make art! Art arty art art. — Andy Beirsack

I'm taking a lot of my favorite artists, different people, my favorite music and marrying that with what I do as a comic. It's very collaborative, arty, fun and cool. — Margaret Cho