It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar – that I call an achievement. 715
Art, as far as it is able, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master; thus your art must be, as it were, God’s grandchild. 781
Memory is a great artist. For every man and for every woman it makes the recollection of his or her life a work of art and an unfaithful record. 698
Art is man’s constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him. 835
What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster! 706
It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists. 1.33K
No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change. 692
Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world. 1.39K
A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art. 734
I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they’re good or there because they’re lucky. 617
The foundation of empire is art and science. Remove them or degrade them, and the empire is no more. Empire follows art and not vice versa as Englishmen suppose. 843
Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail. 1.56K
I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences. 642
Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible. 662
