Art

The art of creation / is older than the art of killing.

[Pjeople in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner as well as their outer life can be exposed.

Art is the flower of life and, as seed, it gives back life.

So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I E. M.

Art must be parochial in the beginning to be cosmopolitan in the end.

The one man who should never attempt an explanation of a poem is its author.

A great artist is always before his time or behind it.

Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works... J. R. R.

As for everything else, so for mathematical theory: beauty can be perceived but not explained.

I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. J. R. R.

If you cannot teach me to fly, teach me to sing.

French is the language that turns dirt into romance.

Opera does not call so much for an imaginative ear as for an imaginative eye, an eye which can see beyond little absurdities toward great truths.

Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.

The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art.

When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder

 

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

 

They carried him 2 not to bury him: They carried him down to crown him…. The poet flourished here, disheveled, Who would not bow before votive lamps But to the common spade.

 

One-woman waterfall, she wears Her slow descent like a long cape And pausing, on the final stair Collects her motions into shape.

 

A poem should not mean But be.

 

This thing you see, a bright-colored deceit, displaying all the many charms of art, with false syllogisms of tint and hue is a cunning deception of the eye…

O reverend Chaucere, rose of rethoris all, As in oure tong ane flour imperiall, That raise in Britane evir, quho redis rycht, Thou beris of makaris the triumph riall. 3