Art

He will lie even when it is inconvenient, the sign of the true artist.

Even popularity can be overdone. In Rome, along at first, you are full of regrets that Michelangelo died; but by and by you only regret that you didn’t see him do it.

A pretty air in an opera is prettier there than it could be anywhere else, I suppose, just as anhonest man in politics shines more than hewould elsewhere.

The drawing shows me at a glance what would be spread over ten pages in a book.

He knows all about art, but he doesn’t knowwhat he likes.

[ On James Joyce :] An essentially private man who wished his total indifference to publicnotice to be universally recognized.

I learned three things in Zurich during thewar. I wrote them down. Firstly, you’re eithera revolutionary or you’re not, and if you’re notyou might as well be an artist as anything else.Secondly, if you can’t be an artist, you mightas well be a revolutionary . . . I forget the thirdthing.

I hate writing, but I love having written.

There is but one art—to omit! O if I knew how to omit, I would ask no other knowledge.

I know of only one rule: style cannot be too clear , too simple .

[ Referring to film producer Samuel Goldwyn :] Well, Mr. Goldwyn, there is not much use in going on. There is this difference between you and me: You are only interested in art and I am only interested in money.

As for me, I am a watercolor.

Set forth three children under the moon, three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo, done this with her legs spread out in the terrible months in the chapel.

[ Declining to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature :]

Art for art’s sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of the true, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts—the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art.

I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this: Was it done with enjoyment—was the carver happy while he was about it?

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

I have a predilection for painting that lends joyousness to a wall.

In a few generations you can breed a racehorse. The recipe for making a man like Delacroix is less well known.

It’s with my brush that I make love.

An artist has no need to express his thought directly in his work for the latter to reflect its quality; it has even been said that the highest praise of God consists in the denial of Him by the atheist who finds creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator.

Hang it all, Robert Browning, there can be but the one “Sordello.”

Poetry is about as much a “criticism of life” as red-hot iron is a criticism of fire.