Neiman M Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ ... ] 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

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

Imagination comes of not having things. — 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

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

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

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

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

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