Literature And Art Quotes

The two World Wars came in part, like much modern literature and art, because men, whose nature is to tire of everything in turn… tired of common sense and civilization.

My father tried to get me to be around gay people a lot when I was young. He owned a gay bookstore and it had a lot of gay literature and art books and he wanted me to be taken care of by the young gays and lesbians who worked for him.

There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

One of the great events in my life was my first meeting with Edison. This wonderful man, who had received no scientific training, yet had accomplished so much, filled me with amazement. I felt that the time I had spent studying languages, literature and art was wasted; though later, of course, I learned this was not so.

There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.

In literature and art memory is a synonym for invention. It is the life-blood of imagination, which faints and dies when the veins are empty.

I never had the idea of moving to Paris and becoming something. I liked the idea of living in Paris because it seemed to have so many parts of life I really enjoyed. The people there seemed to prize literature and art, food and drinking, a more hedonistic way of living.

It isn’t pleasant to surrender to the hegemony of a nation which is still wild and primitive, and to concede the absolute superiority of its customs and institutions, science and technology, literature and art. Must one sacrifice so much in the name of the unity of mankind?

It is unhappily true that much insincere Literature and Art, executed solely with a view to effect, does succeed by deceiving the public.

Literature and art are one of a number of relationships I have with the world. Like you have relationships with your friends and a relationship with your lover and your relationship with your family and your relationship with your work – sometimes it’s really great; sometimes it’s non-existent, sometimes it’s fruitful.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

Explain to me, please, why in our literature and art so often people absolutely incompetent in this field have the final word.

Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art.

You know who the critics are? The men who have failed in literature and art.

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.

Each age, each guilty age, builds high walls around its Versailles; and personally I hate those walls most when they are made by literature and art.