What was behind this smug presumption that what pleased you was bad or at least unimportant in comparison to other things? … Little children were trained not to do “just what they liked’ but … but what? … Of course! What others liked. And w...
But, like all metaphoric wars, the copyright wars are not actual conflicts of survival. Or at least, they are not conflicts for survival of a people or a society, even if they are wars of survival for certain businesses or, more accurately, business ...
Stories are a kind of thing, too. Stories and objects share something, a patina. I thought I had this clear, two years ago before I started, but I am no longer sure how this works. Perhaps a patina is a process of rubbing back so that the essential i...
And then I recalled those mysterious stories about the waxworkers of the middle ages and the public reprobation attached to their trade. Did they not live in cellars, in the eternal twilight propitious for enchantments and apparitions? Their visionar...
...But if we are to say anything important, if fiction is to stay relevant and vibrant, then we have to ask the right questions. All art fails if it is asked to be representative—the purpose of fiction is not to replace life anymore than it is mean...
It is really one of the most serious faults which can be found with the whole conception of democracy, that its cultural function must move on the basis of the common denominator. Such a point of view indeed would make a mess of all of the values whi...
The more I drive myself into the depth of my inside, the more things come up to my vision, visibly or invisibly... I even do not know if I am seeing them with my eye or with my mind. I just need to copy them on my canvases. But this mental process is...
In portraiture I look for people that I recognise - 'Look, it's Uncle Tony' - or for the faces of film stars. The Madame Tussaud's school of art appreciation. In realist works I look for detail; 'Look at the eyelashes!' I say, in idiotic admiration a...
[after the *FOUR* soggy bottom boys finish recording "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow"] Ulysses Everett McGill: Woo! Hot Damn, son I believe you did sell your soul to the devil. Lund: Woooooooo-wee. Boy, that was a miiiighty fine a-pickin' and a-singin...
[last lines] Penny Wharvey McGill: Well, we need that ring. Ulysses Everett McGill: Well that ring is at the bottom of a pretty durn big lake. Penny Wharvey McGill: Uh-uh. Ulysses Everett McGill: A 9,000 hectare lake. Penny Wharvey McGill: I don't ca...
Ulysses Everett McGill: The old tactician has got a plan. For the transportation that is, I don't know how I'm gonna keep my coiffure in order. Pete: How's this a plan? How we gonna get a car? Ulysses Everett McGill: Sell that. I figure it can only h...
[T]here's a thin line separating the delicate from the bloodless, in art as in food.
Art is not in some far-off place.
Art, like dreams, helps our eyes to see what our hearts already know.
Art isn't meaningless... It is in itself. It isn't in that it tries to make life less so.
There was an age, however, when the transition from savagery to civilization, with all its impressive outward manifestations in art and architecture, took place for the first time.
There have been studies that clearly state that children who are exposed to arts education at a young age will in fact do markedly better in their SAT tests.
I was always involved in the arts from a young age. I started studying classical piano at age four as a student of the Associated Board of the Royal School of Music.
Like every art form, there are jealousies and angers and competitiveness in magic. But there's camaraderie among magicians, whether you perform it for a living or you're an enthusiast.
There are a lot of questions about whether architecture is art. The people who ask that think pretty tract houses are architecture. But that doesn't hold up.
The process I go through in the art and the architecture, I actually want it to be almost childlike. Sometimes I think it's magical.
