Kokoschka Oskar Quotes & Sayings

I like to read and dream and create music that is based on the imagery of text. If you have the combination of a great book and a great filmmaker, what could be better for the composer? — Howard Shore

The only way we can develop muscle is through regular exercise. As soon as we stop stretching and working toward higher ethics, our standards start to sag. The muscle gets soft, and instead of excellence we have to settle for mediocrity. Maybe something even worse. — Price Pritchett

The most fundamental in me is coming uppermost, and the transient, the sensational, is dispersing, because it can't adversely influence what is essential to me. — Oskar Kokoschka

The awareness of imagery is part of living ... a life which derives its power from within itself will focus on the perception ... of images. — Oskar Kokoschka

The life of the consciousness is boundless. It interpenetrates the world and is woven in all its imagery. Therefore, we must listen closely to our inner voice. — Oskar Kokoschka

How do I define a work of art? It is not an asset in the stock-exchange sense, but a man's timid attempt to repeat the miracle that the simplest peasant girl is capable of at any time, that of magically producing life out of nothing. — Oskar Kokoschka

True dreams and visions should be as visible to the artist as the phenomena of the objective world. — Oskar Kokoschka

You have much to learn from your success, and more to learn from your failures. — Matshona Dhliwayo

This is the sort of book that justifies fatwahs. If WWIII occurred right now, we could die happy knowing Baxter would never write again. If a dinosaur killing asteroid was headed for Earth and I knew Baxter had another book coming up, I would campaign for letting the rock hit, since it is obviously the work of a benovelent deity trying to save us from another Titan. — James Nicoll

Made with Pencils is grounded in the creativity of a few, propelled by the financial support of many, and most importantly, it's empowering generations to come. A simple idea, a heartfelt desire, and a world of possibility. A pencil, a promise, and a dream. — Adam Braun

Oh life, you should never had begun, but since you did, you should never end — Baltasar Gracian

Women only wear beautiful clothes so that men will want to remove them. — Hanif Kureishi

I consider myself responsible to the coming generations, which are left stranded in a blitzed world, unaware of the soul trembling in awe before the mystery of life. — Oskar Kokoschka

When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead"

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, "They are dead." Then add thereto,
"Yet many a better one has died before."
Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore. — Charles Hamilton Sorley

So dear I love him that with him, All deaths I could endure. Without him, live no life — William Shakespeare

The watcher on the walls. The sword in the darkness. — George R R Martin

However ugly a face may be, we can discover some beauty in it if we first experience wonder before it and then begin to understand it, too. — Oskar Kokoschka

Being the offspring of English teachers is a mixed blessing. When the film star says to you, on the air, 'It was a perfect script for she and I,' inside your head you hear, in the sarcastic voice of your late father, 'Perfect for she, eh? And perfect for I, also?' — Dick Cavett

I try to keep my sitters moving and talking, to make them forget they are being painted. This has nothing to do with extracting intimate secrets or confessions, but rather with establishing, in motion, an essential image of the kind that remains in memory or recurs in dreams. — Oskar Kokoschka

Oh, I don't know. Italy always seemed an awfully long way to go for fascism and olives." "I rather like olives." "Mother rather liked fascism. We had to burn all the photographs when war was declared." They — Chris Cleave

Sometimes, the Internet can feel like a middle-school playground populated by brats in ski masks who name-call and taunt with the fake bravery of the anonymous. But sometimes - thank goodness - it's nicer than real life. — Susan Orlean

I cannot say why I wanted to paint.The only answer is in the pictures themselves. — Oskar Kokoschka

Open your eyes at last and see ... now I will open the book of the world for you,there are no words in it,just pictures — Oskar Kokoschka

Consciousness is a sea ringed with visions. — Oskar Kokoschka

Sometimes if you've got a story that's interesting enough, you don't need to pour sugar on ice cream. The ice cream is great. — Paul Schneider

All that's left now is purely poetic work, putting more life into individual places, as I've made so sure of the fundamental mood and dimension of expression that it won't leave me groping around in uncertainty any more. — Oskar Kokoschka

Consciousness is the grave of things, the place where they cease to exist, beyond which they end. And when they have ended, it seems that they no longer have any essential existence except in the visions in me. — Oskar Kokoschka

How do I define art? A work of art is not an object of monetary value; it is a timid attempt by man to recreate the miracle of which every young woman is capable: to produce life from nothing. Hence, only women and artists have respect for life, and the segment of the so-called "society" that denies women the right to vote and therefore to participate, and denies artists the right to exist, does not really care for life. It oppresses humanity,and it has, directly or indirectly, a vested interest in wars. — Oskar Kokoschka

I used to be too subjective, and I was always tempted to find my inner self in the exterior and dissipate my imagination on other people and on life. — Oskar Kokoschka

A piece of writing is a dangerous thing," he said. "It can change your life. — Tobias Wolff