Neiman Quotes & Sayings

Unlike kitsch, moral clarity is hard to come by. It means working to make sense of things you do not even want to acknowledge. It often means not knowing if you ever get it right. — Susan Neiman

Vitality is not the denial of mortality, but the grown-up way of facing it. — Susan Neiman

My first account was Neiman Marcus. I cold-called them just like I had cold-called businesses when I was selling fax machines for seven years. — Sara Blakely

But really what I mean by crappy is, like - you know - not very good at it. Like, if there were a Witch Mall, Glamora would work at Witch Neiman Marcus, Mombi would work at Witch Talbot's and I would work at the Witch Dollar Store, where people would only come to buy witch paper towels, six rolls for ninety-nine cents. — Danielle Paige

I can easily ignore my detractors and feel the people who respond favorably. — LeRoy Neiman

There's no greatest moment in the arts. It's a life, it's a continuity thing. You can't have a great moment because it's spiritual. It's a belief, it's a calling. If you're an artist, doing your own thing on your own, it's while you're doing it that counts. It's a process. If you get too elated, you can get too depressed. — LeRoy Neiman

As I turn 91 this June 8th, I have to admit my hours at the easel have diminished. — LeRoy Neiman

Not only deprives workers of the fruits of their labour by paying them 1/200th of the salary that goes to their CEO (the international average as of this writing, not including bonuses and stock options); it deprives workers of the very meaning of labour itself — Susan Neiman

I have always said to young artists that scholastic training and the studying of art history are crucial to fully developing as an artist. — LeRoy Neiman

Most of us no longer have the luxury of asking whether a job is genuinely productive, but only whether it pays well and has tolerable conditions. — Susan Neiman

I draw all the time. Drawing is my backbone. I don't think a painter has to be able to draw, I just think that if you draw, you better draw well. — LeRoy Neiman

No, I never had any dreams. The process of art is a dream in itself. The artist just doesn't ... you work out something. It's yours. You don't have to go to sleep to do that. You do that on the canvas. — LeRoy Neiman

I don't know if I'm an impressionist or an expressionist. You can call me an American first ... I've been labeled doing neimanism, so that's what it is, I guess. — LeRoy Neiman

What the Enlightenment rejected in the South Sea islands was what it perceived as a stupor, the docile submission to whatever bit of the given is coming your way. And what's coming your way is unlikely to be a breeze or a cow or a coconut, but a new kind of screen you can zap or click to create the illusion that life isn't passing you by. — Susan Neiman

She might have to use her employee discount to buy something more threatening today, although at the moment the most dangerous thing she could think of that Neiman Marcus had to offer was the employee discount itself. — Stephanie Bond

The big shock of my life was Abstract Expressionism - Pollock, de Kooning, those guys. It changed my work. I was an academically trained student, and suddenly you could pour paint, smear it on, broom it on! — LeRoy Neiman

It's not the act of arrogance to draw, it's humbling - you must use your God-given talent. And of all the people I sketch, in most cases I feel I have to measure up to the subject. — LeRoy Neiman

I thrive with fashion and shopping and imports and things like that. It gives me a rush. I love Barneys New York and Neiman Marcus and all the top-of-the-line houses. — Lark Voorhies

I've got the public. I don't care about the critics. I did at one time. I don't any more. I did when I needed compliments. But if you get a lot of compliments, you don't need a critic to tell you, 'This should be done another way.' — LeRoy Neiman

When it comes to my own makeup, I like to look fresh, clean, and well-rested-nothing too crazy. My mother really introduced me to beauty. She's obsessed with all of the magazines' 'best of' lists, like the ones in Allure, Glamour, and InStyle. Her beauty cabinet looks like one of those annual lists. She got me into finding staples, and as much as I love going to Neiman Marcus to just play around, generally, when I find something that I like, I stick with it for years. — Phoebe Tonkin

Within the first year of launching my company, Spanx, I decided to go over to England and cold-call Harrods, Harvey Nichols, and Selfridges the same way I had cold-called Neiman Marcus, Saks, Nordstrom, and Bloomingdale's here in the United States. — Sara Blakely

Throughout my life, cigars have played different roles for me. They fit easily and well in the various stages and experiences Ive had
like a companion, almost. If youve smoked a long time, as I have, they become part of you. — LeRoy Neiman

Reason drives your search to make sense of the world by pushing you to ask why things are as they are. For theoretical reason, the outcome of that search becomes science; for practical reason, the outcome is a more just world. — Susan Neiman

You know what I like about San Francisco? The women are beautiful, fashionable and smart. San Francisco is one of the only cities I like to visit. I love New York and Chicago - I studied there, and L.A. has the same people as New York. — LeRoy Neiman

When consuming goods rather than satisfying work becomes the focus of our culture, we have created (or acquieced in) a society of permanent adolescents. — Susan Neiman

Home is the normal
whatever place you happen to start from and return to without having to answer questions. It's a metaphor that may seem to fit reduced expectations. We no longer seek towers that would reach to the heavens; we've abandoned attempts to prove that we live in a chain of being whose every link bears witness to the glory of God. We merely seek assurance that we find ourselves in a place where we know our way about. — Susan Neiman

Everything about my journey to get Spanx off the ground entailed me having to be a salesperson - from going to the hosiery mills to get a prototype made to calling Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. I had to position myself to get five minutes in the door with buyers. — Sara Blakely

I love clothes! I shop everywhere, but I like Urban Outfitters, Forever 21, Nordstrom, and Neiman Marcus. It's a wide range. I'm from California, and I love the Pasadena Flea Market. — Keke Palmer

In the most general terms, the Enlightenment goes back to Plato's belief that truth and beauty and goodness are connected; that truth and beauty, disseminated widely, will sooner or later lead to goodness. (While we're making at effort at truth and goodness, beauty reminds us what we're hold out for.) — Susan Neiman

The people who love my paintings, that respond to them the most, they're spectators, they're not viewers. — LeRoy Neiman

The most important thing is to just do it. If I work at a higher level I have responsibility to do better than what I've done before. Sometimes the best happens - beyond possibility. Just do it. Can't worry about it. — LeRoy Neiman

Doing what you can to move your part of the world closer to the way it should be, while never losing sight of the way it is, is what being a grown-upmcomes to. — Susan Neiman

But 'Playboy' was liberating. I was drawn to it and went for it full throttle. — LeRoy Neiman

I've met and sketched most of the great athletes from the past five decades and their movement, grace and energy have kept me captivated over the years. That's what the ancient Greeks first saw and that's what caught my interest. — LeRoy Neiman

Freedom cannot simply mean doing whatever strikes you at the moment: that way you're a slave to any whim or passing fancy. Real freedom involves control over your life as a whole, learning to make plans and promises and decisions, to take responsibility for your actions' consequences. — Susan Neiman

Dogma
ideas uninformed by experience
is a form of ingratitude. — Susan Neiman

Ordinary goodness is fraught with veins of vanity and self-interest and above all with pleasure
because goodness makes you feel more alive. — Susan Neiman

As long as your ideas of what's possible are limited by what's actual, no other idea has a chance. — Susan Neiman

Growing up means realizing that no time of one's life is the best one, and resolving to savor every second of joy within reach. You know each will pass, and you no longer experience that as betrayal. — Susan Neiman

If life is a gift, then the more you partake in it, the more you show thanks. — Susan Neiman

I love the passion you go through while you're creating. — LeRoy Neiman

I hold doors open for all the women. Men can open the doors for themselves. — LeRoy Neiman

I guess I created LeRoy Neiman. Nobody else told me how to do it. Well, I'm a believer in the theory that the artist is as important as his work. — LeRoy Neiman

Rousseau introduced the idea of false needs, and showed how the systems we live in work against our growing up: they dazzle us with toys and bewilder us with so many trivial products that we are too busy making silly choices to remember that the adult ones are made by others. — Susan Neiman

When you work in the glove department at Neiman's, you are selling things that nobody buys anymore. — Steve Martin

My husband wanted to be cremated. I told him I'd scatter his ashes at Neiman Marcus - that way, I'd visit him every day. — Joan Rivers

It's been fun. I've had a lucky life. Art has made me pull the best out of myself. — LeRoy Neiman

My lovely wife Janet has been in a few paintings. She is basically a reserved woman who has never sought the limelight. She has always been there throughout my career and continues to be at my side. — LeRoy Neiman

Boxing is my real passion. I can go to ballet, theatre, movies, or other sporting events ... and nothing is like the fights to me. I'm excited by the visual beauty of it. A boxer can look so spectacular by doing a good job. — LeRoy Neiman

'Playboy' made the good life a reality for me and made it the subject matter of my paintings - not affluence and luxury as such, but joie de vivre itself. — LeRoy Neiman

It has been difficult to hold onto many paintings but I have retained a few. Possibly the current favorite is titled 'Big Band' completed in 2005. It measures 13 feet x 9 feet. It has 18 nearly life size recognizable portraits of the biggest jazz stars that I knew and saw perform in the 1950s, '60s, '70s, '80s and includes Wynton Marsalis. — LeRoy Neiman

The businessman says 'If I don't do it first, somebody else will.' The artist says 'If I don't do it first, nobody else will.' — LeRoy Neiman

Do What You Love and You Will Love What You Do! — Neiman Nix

Philosophy's greatest task is to enlarge our sense of possibility. — Susan Neiman

It's a nice feeling to go out in the world and look for excellence - the best in man. My subject is very valid. It's about people, and about life. — LeRoy Neiman

Eating is one of the great beauties in life. One of my favorite recreations ... eating with friends, the service, the ambience. — LeRoy Neiman

Neiman's book is written with considerable flair, as many critics have already noted, but it possesses a far rarer and more valuable quality: moral seriousness. Her argument builds a powerful emotional force, a sense of deep inevitability ... It is not often that a work of such dark conclusions has felt so hopeful and brave. — Mark Kingwell

Imagination comes of not having things. — LeRoy Neiman

We want to make an impact on the world, but we end up making or selling playthings that are developed to keep us distracted and designed to deconstruct. We have turned the activities that were meant to be the stuff of life into mere means of subsisting in it. — Susan Neiman

You may substitute knowledge for superstition without satisfying the needs that drive people into superstition's arms. — Susan Neiman

[ ... ] God's message is that we are largely on our own. We are the ones who give moral guidelines body and life. You can take, if you will, your solace in heaven, but you must work out your ethics on earth. — Susan Neiman

Some people try to paint in my style. Some simply sell pirated copies of my work. Some claim to be my publisher or agent or even my exclusive representative, when they are not. — LeRoy Neiman

Negotiating small differences is part of being a grownup; no one can tell you in advance where to put your foot down. — Susan Neiman

I played an artist in a comedy called 'Rooster.' It was a zany film by Glen Larson, a friend who produced several successful television series including 'Magnum PI.' — LeRoy Neiman

Willie did not need a psychiatrist to explain this woman's glamour profile: Neiman-Marcus-camouflage for a serious absence of soul. — Linda McDonald

I've met a lot of artists who wanted to paint me. LeRoy Neiman was one. He did it from a photograph. He made 20,000 copies, and we sold them all. — Shaquille O'Neal

1314h.: I am now seated back in Deck 8's Rainbow Room watching "Ernst," the Nadir's mysterious and ubiquitous Art Auctioneer, 118 mediate spirited bidding for a signed Leroy Neiman print. Let me iterate this. Bidding is spirited and fast approaching four figures for a signed Leroy Neiman print - not a signed Leroy Neiman, a signed Leroy Neiman print. — David Foster Wallace

Attractive women in the early stages of disrepair, fighting to keep age at bay with facials, compression undergarments, and aggressively fashionable skirts bought off the rack at Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom. They run on treadmills, these women, work out with personal trainers and play tennis at the club, but still their hips widen, their legs thicken, their breasts sag. Genetics help some more than others, but they are all like melting ice cream bars, slowly sliding down the stick as they come apart. — Jonathan Tropper

Every time you accept the claim that you can't change human nature or you have to accept the way the world is, you are accepting the foundations of the worldview that grounded the ancien regime. — Susan Neiman

I always stayed in tune with my own ambitions and attitudes and I'm still my intractable old self, for better or worse. — LeRoy Neiman

Every time I started painting it was like a new experience, but they all came out the same. — LeRoy Neiman

I had a go at changing history - maybe not all by myself - I fought at the battle of Normandy, I slogged through the Ardennes, and I celebrated the liberation of Paris on the streets with beautiful French girls throwing flowers at me. I said good-bye to my first true love and discovered what I really wanted to do with my life. — LeRoy Neiman

Human attempts to construct moral order are always precarious: If righteousness too often leads to self-righteousness, the demand for justice can lead to one guillotine or another. — Susan Neiman

Whatever else you may need to get clarity, you must start with open eyes. — Susan Neiman

Kitsch is much more than a question of style; it's a preference for consolation over truth. Disney's version of reality is not just cleaned up, it's pernicious. Unlike the best forms of art and philosophy, it undercuts the possibility of transformation because it portrays a world that's just fine as it is
or as it will be by the time the credits come up. — Susan Neiman

Neiman-Marcus is one thing, and the Dallas Cowboys are another. — Mercedes McCambridge

When I paint, I seriously consider the public presence of a person - the surface facade. I am less concerned with how people look when they wake up or how they act at home. A person's public presence reflects his own efforts at image development. — LeRoy Neiman

One great function of the arts is to keep ideals alive in a culture that does not yet realize them. — Susan Neiman