I am an artisan. I only became an artist when people watch what I do. That is when it becomes art.

Makeup ignites a psychological transformation of both the wearer and the observer. My paintings sought to locate the subject of art within the manipulation of that altered predisposition.

In art there are tears that lie too deep for thought.

Art doesn't just happen by accident. It is about pulling out new tricks and trying new things.

A race is a work of art that people can look at and be affected in as many ways they're capable of understanding.

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.

Art's everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.

Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

To me, art and storytelling serve primal, spiritual functions in my daily life. Whether I'm telling a bedtime story to my kids or trying to mount a movie or write a short story or a novel, I take it very seriously.

As a young girl, I loved having stories read to me. There is something magical about narration and voiceovers. Recording a voiceover is an art form in itself.

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.

I experimented with fashion as it being more like art, allowing what I wore to express what I was feeling on the inside. Androgyny, rock culture, and grunge - they definitely had an effect on the things that made me feel cool and comfortable.

Whether or not you agree with Ayn Rand - and I have certain issues with some of her beliefs - the woman can tell a story. I mean, the novel as an art form is just in full florid bloom in 'Atlas Shrugged.' It's an unbelievable story. The characters are so compelling, and what she's saying is mind-expanding.

If you cannot learn to love real art, at least learn to hate sham art and reject it.

They say Princes learn no art truly, but the art of horsemanship. The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom.

When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it - a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand - as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it's bad art.

There are many museums dedicated to technology, artistic endeavors, music, and that sort of thing. From that perspective, I think games really do have a place as a kind of collaborative art or a synthesis of all these various aspects into a whole, and that, in itself, can be perceived as art.

It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.

To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gifts - absolute gifts - which have not been acquired by one's own effort. And, moreover, to succeed, the artist much possess the courageous soul.

Making art, good art, is always a struggle. It can make you happy when you pull it off. There's no better feeling. It's beauteous. But it's always about hard work and inspiration and sweat and good ideas.

Every artist writes his own autobiography.

I'm into sincerity in music and sincerity in art. If it doesn't feel true, I don't want to do it. Things that are too dramatic scare me. I think that's why I don't always fit into the world of performing arts.

It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter.

I don't like to say I have given my life to art. I prefer to say art has given me my life.

Melodrama is one of the most stunning art forms. These are stories where the emotions are big, and the situations are big, and the artists believe in the situation dramatically. There's no irony or distance.

Juggling is sometimes called the art of controlling patterns, controlling patterns in time and space.

Art is pattern informed by sensibility.

By the will art thou lost, by the will art thou found, by the will art thou free, captive, and bound.

Architecture is a negotiated art, and it's highly political, and if you want to make buildings, there is diplomacy required.

The No. 1 quote critics give me is, 'Thom, your work is irrelevant.' Now, that's a fascinating, fascinating comment. Yes, irrelevant to the little subculture, this microculture, of modern art. But here's the point: My art is relevant because it's relevant to 10 million people. That makes me the most relevant artist in this culture.

People are craving this great progress in electronics, going after computers, the Internet, etc. It's a giant progress technologically. But they must have a balance of soul, a balance for human beauty. That means art has an important role.

It may be that the deep necessity of art is the examination of self-deception.

Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Parents are usually more careful to bestow knowledge on their children rather than virtue, the art of speaking well rather than doing well; but their manners should be of the greatest concern.

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.

All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.

I think that's always the goal of art, is to make people ask themselves questions.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.

Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.

Everything great in science and art is simple. What can be less complicated than the greatest discoveries of humanity - gravitation, the compass, the printing press, the steam engine, the electric telegraph?

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.

In art the best is good enough.

Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate taste.

Even Michelangelo got paid for doing the Sistine Chapel. To those artists who say they're doing it for the love of art, I say: Get real.

An empty canvas is a living wonder... far lovelier than certain pictures.

I was an art history major, but never specifically contemporary. I would say where I really stopped were the abstract expressionists in the New York school.