Fine Art Quotations

By Barry Fetter

FINE ART QUOTATIONS contains over 1,700 carefully selected quotes, quips, observations, opinions and insights from over 800 of the world's greatest artists, actors, painters, musicians and philosophers - classical and modern.

The material is conveniently organized into fifteen subjects: Acting, Actors, Art, Artists, Critics, Dance, Film, Music, Musicians, Opera, Painters, Painting, Photography, Sculpture and Theatre. Each subject is consistently divided into eight sections including Positive, Negative, Advice and Jokes. Whenever possible, individual quotations are arranged to create a dialogue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Fetter
• Release date: Nov 18, 2014

Book preview

FINE ART QUOTATIONS

Over 1,700 Carefully Selected Quotes from 800+ of the World’s Greatest Artists

Compiled and Arranged by: Barry Fetter

Copyright © 2014 by MCR Agency, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recorded, photocopied, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Smashwords Edition

ISBN

0-9788794-7-3

978-0-9788794-7-1

Other MCR Titles

Wisdom of the Ages

Men on Women/Women on Men

Good Quotations on Writers and Writing

Better Business Quotations

Lowdown on Doctors, Lawyers & Politicians

Gun Control Quotations

Contents

Preface

Subject List

Section List

Subject Finder Index

Quotations

Author Index

Other MCR Quotation Titles

Review this Book

Subject List

Acting

Actors

Art

Artists

Critics

Dance

Film

Music

Musicians

Opera

Painters

Painting

Photography

Sculpture

Theatre

Section List

CHAPTER SUBJECT ORGANIZATION

A. Every subject is divided into the following eight sections:

1. Essence Root, Heart.

2. Opposites Balance, Change, Paradoxes.

3. Insight Perspective, Viewpoint.

4. Positive Aspects, Influences, Presence, Qualities, and Virtues.

5. Negative Aspects, Influences, Absence, Qualities, and Vices.

6. Advice Strategy, Suggestions, Helpful Information.

7. Poetry Verse

8. Jokes Humor

This organization enables the user to readily locate all items of a particular type. However, since each section has both an individual and a collective meaning, the best results will be obtained by reading each subject from 1 to 8.

Subject Finder Index

FINE ART QUOTATIONS has 15 different subjects. Each subject includes minor subjects and subtitles. This alphabetical index of subtitles will help you locate a subject.

Subtitle will be found in Subject

Acting > Acting

Actors > Actors

Actresses > Actors

Art > Art

Artists > Artists

Ballet > Dance

Cameras > Photography

Characters > Acting

Cinema > Film

Classical > Music

Composers > Musicians

Conductors > Musicians

Country Music > Music

Creativity > Artists

Criticism > Critics

Critics > Critics

Dance > Dance

Dancers > Dance

Directors > Actors

Directors > Film

Drawing > Painting

Film > Film

Folk Music > Music

Hollywood > Film

Imagination > Artists

Inspiration > Artists

Instruments > Musicians

Jazz > Music

Lyricists > Opera

Melody > Music

Movies > Film

Music > Music

Musicians > Musicians

Opera > Opera

Orchestra > Musicians

Painters > Painters

Painting > Painting

Photographers > Photography

Photographs > Photography

Photography > Photography

Pictures > Painting

Roles > Acting

Screenplay > Film

Singers > Opera

Song > Opera

Symphony > Music

Preface

FINE ART QUOTATIONS contains over 1,700 carefully selected quotes, quips, observations, opinions and insights from over 800 of the world's greatest artists, actors, painters, musicians and philosophers - classical and modern.

The material is conveniently organized into fifteen subjects: Acting, Actors, Art, Artists, Critics, Dance, Film, Music, Musicians, Opera, Painters, Painting, Photography, Sculpture and Theatre. Each subject is consistently divided into eight sections including Positive, Negative, Advice and Jokes. Whenever possible, individual quotations are arranged to create a dialogue.

What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.

Willa Cather (1873-1947)

The Song of the Lark, IV

Art is energy shaped by intelligence.

Gore Vidal (b. 1925)

Matters of Fact and Fiction

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.

Michelangelo (1474-1564)

Sections are an innovative concept that enable you to quickly locate desired content. Want advice? Go to the Advice section of any subject. Looking for jokes? Head over to the Joke section. We suggest you read one complete subject before you start skipping around. Take a look at the Subject List and Section List on the following pages to see what’s available.

MCR has been publishing quotation programs for computers since 1988. Our programs have been purchased on five continents. Please visit our home page. Our web address is: www.quotations.com.

ACTING

1. ESSENCE

1

To hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature.

Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Hamlet., Act iii. Sc. 2

2

That exchange - Can you describe this? I can. - is at the heart of acting, as it is of poetry and of so many of the arts.

Ronald Reagan b. 1911

Washington Post Magazine 1988

3

Acting is make-believe...if you make believe well enough, audiences make believe, too.

Jason Robards (b. 1922)

NY Times 1985

4

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Ellen Barkin (b. 1955)

5

A lot of what acting is is paying attention.

Robert Redford (b. 1937)

2. OPPOSITES

6

Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.

Bette Davis (1908-1990)

7

Acting isn't really a creative profession. It's an interpretative one.

Paul Newman (b. 1925)

8

Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion.

Kate Reid (1930-1993)

9

Acting is...shame at exhibiting yourself, glory when you can forget yourself.

John Gielgud (b. 1904)

quoted in Ronald Harwood's The Ages of Gielgud

10

Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself.

Jeanne Moreau (b. 1928)

11

I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me.

Cary Grant (1904-1986)

Parade Magazine '85

3. INSIGHT

12

You get inside a character, a place, and a moment. You come to know the character...as a particular person, yearning, hoping, fearing, loving, a face...and you convey that knowledge. In acting...you become...more attentive to the core of the soul - that part of each of us that God holds in the hollow of his hand, and into which he breathes the breath of life.

Ronald Reagan (born 1911)

Quoted in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations

13

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

Paul Newman (b. 1925)

14

It can be a simple sentence that makes one simple point, and you build from that. You zero in on the one moment that gets that character: you go for it. That's it man, and if you fail, the whole thing is down the drain, but if you make it, you hit the moon.

Jack Lemmon (b. 1925)

15

Acting is a job, like carpentry or building roads. There are a hundred people involved in putting you up there on the screen.

Sean Connery (b. 1930)

16

(Acting) is an extension of life. How you're capable of performing in your life, that's how you're capable of performing on screen.

John Cassavetes (1929-1989)

17

Acting is like getting your pants down: you're exposed.

Paul Newman (b. 1925)

Time (1982)

18

I can never remember being afraid of an audience. If the audience could do better, they'd be up here on stage and I'd be out there watching them.

Ethel Merman (1908-1984)

4. POSITIVE

19

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

Oscar Wilde (1856-1900)

The Picture of Dorian Grey, 1891

20

Can you imagine being wonderfully overpaid for dressing up and playing games?

David Niven (1910-1983)

in a interview

21

Nobody is as interesting to spend an evening with as a really good part.

Rex Harrison (b. 1908)

A Damned Serious Business

22

His uniqueness lies in the fact that he is greater than the sum of his parts.

Kenneth Tynan (1927-1980)

Profiles (On John Geilgud)

5. NEGATIVE

23

Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at age four.

Katharine Hepburn (b. 1909)

24

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

25

Acting is the lowest of the arts, if it is an art at all.

George Moore (1852-1933)

Mummer-Worship

26

I believe you can't be an actor if you haven't had the feeling of being abandoned as a child.

Isabelle Adjani (b. 1955)

27

You can't teach acting. You learn that from the human race.

Lillian Gish (1893-1993)

PBS TV '88

28

Some people are addicts. If they don't act, they don't exist.

Jeanne Moreau (b. 1928)

29

I played with the best actors and tried never to be caught acting.

Lillian Gish (1893-1993)

PBS TV '88

6. ADVICE

30

First Rule of Acting: Whatever happens, look as if it were intended.

Arthur Bloch (1882-1953)

31

It is best in the theatre to act with confidence no matter how little right you have to it.

Lillian Hellman (1905-1984)

Pentimento

32

You have to believe in yourself, that's the secret. Even when I was in the orphanage, when I was roaming the street trying to find enough to eat, even then I thought of myself as the greatest actor in the world.

Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)

33

Look, he said, if you're playing Romeo and your Juliet is a pig, you find something you can love about pigs!

Montgomery Clift (1920-1966)

34

Don't be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had missed.

Lily Tomlin (b. 1939)

35

Acting is not a matter of being somebody else, it's a matter of seeming to be somebody else. - I'd have been a murderess, a suicide and a drunkard if I'd lived all my parts. You've got to stay outside what you're doing.

Gladys Cooper (1888-1971)

Sunday Times Magazine, '68

36

It's not whether you really cry. It's whether the audience thinks you are crying.

Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982)

37

Make them laugh, make them cry, and back to laughter. What do people go to the theatre for? An emotional exercise... I am a servant of the people. I have never forgotten that.

Mary Pickford (1894-1979)

38

I don't like showing the technique. I don't like people who say, Here, I'm going to act, but first I have to bounce off this wall. If you have to bounce off the wall, do it by yourself. Don't feature the technique. My old drama coach used to say, don't just do something, stand there. Gary Cooper wasn't afraid to do nothing.

Clint Eastwood (b. 1930)

39

I have designed my style pantomimes as white ink drawings on black backgrounds, so that man's destiny appears as a thread lost in an endless labyrinth...

Marcel Marceau (b. 1923)

40

[Main points of lecture to drama students at Montgomery College about going to Hollywood to make career:]

1. If you go, bring a ton of money.

2. Do not count on anything except rejection.

3. If you still want to come, plan on a really long stay before you get anything at all going.

4. Connections are everything. If you don't have them, don't go.

5. Nothing is consistent in Hollywood except inconsistency. Expect at least as many downs as ups. Even when you think things are going great, they won't be for long.

6. Do not expect to generate much of your psychic income from Hollywood.

Ben Stein (b. 1944)

Giving Credit, American Spectator, 1997

7. POETRY

42

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,

To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;

To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,

Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold-

For this the tragic Muse first trod the stage.

Pope (1688-1744)

Prologue to Addison's Cato

43

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting,

'Twas only that when he was off, he was acting.

Goldsmith (1728-1774)

Retaliation

8. JOKES

44

He had never acted in his life and couldn't play the pin in Pinafore.

P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975)

The Luck of the Bodkins, 1935

45

Method acting? There are quite a few methods. Mine involves a lot of talent, a glass and some cracked ice.

John Barrymore (1882-1942)

46

The most important thing in acting is honesty. If you can fake that, you got it made.

George Burns (b. 1896)

News summaries

47

Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.

Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-1983)

Time Magazine '83

ACTORS

1. ESSENCE

48

Actors are the jockeys of literature; they don't ride horses, they ride plays, and make them run.

Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-1983)

Observer Magazine, 82

49

An actor is an interpreter of other men's words, often a soul which wishes to reveal itself to the world but dare not, a craftsman, a bag of tricks, a vanity bag, a cool observer of mankind, a child, and at best an unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents.

Sir Alec Guiness (b. 1914)

Blessings in Disguise

50

An actor is a sculptor who carves in snow.

Edwin Booth (1833-1893)

51

An actor's a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening.

Marlon Brando (b. 1924)

British Vogue

2. OPPOSITES

52

Though every actor's ambition is to stop the show, his instructions are that it must go on.

Kenneth Tynan (1927-1980)

Profiles

53

In the old days an actress tried to become a star. Today we have stars trying to become actresses.

Sir Laurence Olivier (1907-1989)

54

Scratch an actor and you'll find an actress.

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

Recalled on Parker's death '67

55

Was she a great actress? Yes, I think so. Of course, women act all the time. It is easier to judge a man.

Iris Murdoch (1919-1999)

The Sea, The Sea

56

Some of the greatest love affairs I've known have involved one actor - unassisted.

Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

57

A totally healthy actor is a paradox.

Vittorio Gassman (1922-2000)

quoted in the Wall Street Journal

58

Actors are only honest hypocrites.

William Hazlitt (1778-1830)

59

As a director, you want to be in control, but...you want to be a little bit out of control of being in control. Whereas, if you're an actor, you're trying as hard as you can to be in control all the while that you also have to be in control of being out of control.

Warren Beatty (b. 1937)

Vanity Fair Magazine '91

60

The chief requisite of an actor is the ability to do nothing well, which is by no means so easy as it seems.

Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)

Hitchcock

3. INSIGHT

61

The actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.

Sir Laurence Olivier (1907-1989)

Olivier on Acting NY Times '86

62

The necessary qualifications for a successful actress are, the face of Venus, the figure of Juno, the brains of Minerva, the memory of Macaulay, the chastity of Diana, the grace of Terpsichore, but above and beyond all the hide of a rhinoceros.

Dame Madge Kendall (1849-1935)

Autobiography

63

An actor can remember his briefest notice well into senescence and long after he had forgotten his phone number and where he lives.

Jean Kerr (b. 1923)

Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1957)

64

An actor is totally vulnerable...his total personality is exposed to critical judgment - his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance. In short, his ego.

Sir Alec Guiness (b. 1914)

NY Times '64

65

Playing our parts. Yes, we all have to do that and from childhood on, I have found that my own character has been much harder to play worthily and far harder at times to comprehend than any of the roles I have portrayed.

Bette Davis (1908-1990)

NY Herald Tribune, '56

66

Father Time is the make-up man responsible for the physical changes that determine the parts the average actor is to play.

Fred Allen (1894-1956)

67

An actress always knows when she's hit it, and mostly you haven't; but once or twice I hit it right, so maybe that's good enough for one life.

Helen Hayes (1900-1993)

68

People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: they pretend they are someone else.

Bette Davis (1908-1990)

69

I used to think as I look out on the Hollywood night, There must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star. But I'm not going to worry about them. I'm dreaming the hardest.

Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962)

70

On a fine December day in 1924, as I walked down Hollywood Boulevard towards nowhere in particular, I was down to that essential starting place for all actors. I was broke.

Gary Cooper (1901-1961)

Saturday Evening Post Magazine, '56

71

The actor doesn't mind screaming and crying on the stage, but would sooner not do it on the street.

John Updike (b. 1932)

Observer Magazine, '79

72

A relationship with Laurence Olivier is akin to that of a tugboat nudging an ocean greyhound into harbor.

Kenneth Tynan (1927-1980)

Tynan Right and Left

73

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

Marcel Marceau (b. 1923)

On silence and the art of the mime, Reader's Digest '58

74

Television is for making one famous, films are for making money, and an actor's proper place is the theatre.

Alan Badel (1923-1982)

Radio Times Magazine '84

75

You've got to perform in a role hundreds of times. In keeping it fresh one can become a large, madly humming, demented refrigerator.

Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-1983)

Times Magazine '78

76

I mean, the question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don't we all anyway; might as well get paid for it.

Elaine Dundy (b. 1926)

The Dud Avocado, 1958

77

Variety is an actor's courage.

Jackie Gleason (1916-1987)

Emmy Jan 83

78

Modesty is the artifice of actors, similar to passion in call girls.

Jackie Gleason (1916-1987)

79

A painter paints, a musician plays, a writer writes - but a movie actor waits.

Mary Astor (1906-1987)

80

Evil people...you never forget them.