Quotes about Art

What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be.

The written word Should be clean as bone, Clear as light, Firm as stone. Two words are not As good as one. I

To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for me one and the same thing, and it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory.

To create a work of art, great or small, is work, hard work, and work requires discipline and order.

Stories, no matter how simple, can be vehicles of truth; can be, in fact, icons. It's no coincidence that Jesus taught almost entirely by telling stories, simple stories dealing with the stuff of life familiar to the Jews of his day. Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos we see despite all the chaos.

Getting out of the way and listening is not something that comes easily, either in art or in prayer.

If I cannot see evidence of incarnation in a painting of a bridge in the rain by Hokusai, a book by Chaim Potok or Isaac Bashevis Singer, music by Bloch or Bernstein, then I will miss its significance in an Annunciation by Franciabigio, the final chorus of the St. Matthew Passion , the words of a sermon by John Donne.

In worldly terms, she was totally innocent; Eve before the fall, with no knowledge of good and evil. She made one realize how necessary the Fall was; without it, there would have been no human drama, and so no literature, no art, no suffering, no religion, no laughter, no joy, no sin and no redemption. Only camera work (towards which Mrs. Dobbs's painting was reaching) and sociology (which her sister, Beatrice Webb, may be said to have invented).

You don't write for success. That takes part of your attention away from the writing. If you're really doing it, that's all you're doing: writing.

There is a science to living well and art to experiencing the good life, and it begins with wisdom.

Life is a stage: perform your masterpiece.

The true art of memory, is the art of attention