Art quotes
22.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside art — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"I think it's a wonderful time to be a black woman who makes films. It's a good time to be an artist period. Traditional models of making and consuming art are breaking down and being rebuilt. I find that to be incredibly exciting as a filmmaker and film marketer."
"I know that sounds a little bit corny, but I've found some solace in that. I hope art can continue to do that for people, I really do."
"I feel mushy these days when I think about art and artists and the work that lies ahead for us. There's good work to be done and there's joy to be found in it, I think."
"I mean, if this [film Age of Trump] wasn't on Netflix, it would be playing at some lovely art house theater on the West Side once or twice or for a week or maybe two weeks if I was lucky and then it would go away, and I'd be lucky if I could sell the DVDs off my website."
"Both of my parents were incredibly supportive of me being in any arts, because they were both in the arts. They weren't the typical story of, "Oh, get a real job. You need to make money." They basically said, "Yup, be an artist. You'll be broke your whole life but you'll be happy.""
"I always knew that I'd probably do something in the arts."
"The art of writing is the art of doing what you think you're doing. This is not as simple as it sounds. It implies a very difficult undertaking: the necessity to think. And it implies the requirement to think out three separate, very hard problems: What is it you want to say? How are you going to say it? Have you really said it?"
"Romantic art is always stylized: the better the art, the cleaner and more attractive and intelligent the stylization."
"The culture of the United States has flooded the world. It's the inevitable result of a powerful culture, art. We've got an instinctive touch when it comes to the popular mind because we've had no aristocracy. It is a democratic country. And we know without knowing it, without bothering to understand it, how to reach ordinary people, sometimes with the most vulgar, worthless junk on the face of the earth, but we know how to do it [laughter]."
"I still feel-kind of temporary about myself."
"Theater is a very changeable art. It responds to the moment in history the way the newspaper does, and there's no predicting what to come up with next."
"I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an armchair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right."
"The scar, and her indifference to it, did something extraordinary for her, just as damage to some art object threw into relief how beautiful it had once been, tarnishing and tempering her face with the reminder of what humanity did to lovely things and how they bore it."
"I don't need any crutches in order to concentrate. As a child I learned that you must be ready because I'd be yelled at more than other people and it would always be my fault. I learned that to be professional is your number-one priority. The art comes second. You learn that, in order to give your best performance, you have to be a good technician, which means never allowing negative influences affect your performance."
"I think art is, unfortunately, sometimes our only shot at communicating our indignation safely and effectively."
"I did pose for 'Black and White' magazine, a prestigious, artistic publication, several years ago... I did this as a piece of art and make no apologies for the creative decisions I've made as an artist in my 20-year career."
"The art of appreciation begins with self appreciation."
"Listening to great music and art inspires me and recharges me."
"When I was taking art history I was always angry that we would skip certain chapters because "it wasn't important." Like, "Let's skip over the Japanese. Let's just get to Giotto, because that's where everything begins." It's like, no. Everything is relevant to me."
"A series is a big deal, and there are a lot of people out there writing stuff that don't know what art is."
