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Quotes by Artist

"The sincere friends of this world are as ship lights in the stormiest of nights."

"I had some connections from the newspapers that I did work with up there, so there was a newspaper publisher in Hollywood, and they promised me work and so on."


"Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous."

"Yet with great toil all that I can attain by long experience, and in learned schools, is for to know my knowledge is but vain, and those that think them wise, are greatest fools."

"Do all the work you can; that is the whole philosophy of the good way of life."

"Blue is the male principle, stern and spiritual. Yellow the female principle, gentle, cheerful and sensual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy and always the colour which must be fought and vanquished by the other two."

"I was at the Royal Art School. That was a preparatory school specially for art teachers. You see, it was not so much for the development of artists. But we had there terribly stiff training."


"There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke."

"Other times you can get showy for three minutes, and that's OK with certain films. But that isn't right with an Ang Lee movie, you have to fit right in. You have to understand Ang, respect him and be part of the team and not be in charge of it - he is in charge of it."

"Earth teach me to forget myself as melted snow forgets its life. Earth teach me resignation as the leaves which die in the fall. Earth teach me courage as the tree which stands all alone. Earth teach me regeneration as the seed which rises in the spring."

"I had to experience how someone beside me suddenly falls over and is dead and the bullet has hit him squarely. I had to experience that quite directly. I wanted it. I'm therefore not a pacifist at all - or am I?"

"All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part."

"It is said by the rebels at Roxbury that Col. Watson has given his quota to support the people."


"The rest, called literature, is a dossier of human imbecility for the guidance of future professors."

"Now interpersonal politics... that's what it's all about."

"Many of the artists who have represented Negro life have seen only the comic, ludicrous side of it, and have lacked sympathy with and appreciation for the warm big heart that dwells within such a rough exterior."


"It makes no difference whether a work is naturalistic or abstract; every visual expression follows the same fundamental laws."

"The beast for me is greed. Whether you read Dante, Swift, or any of these guys, it always boils down to the same thing: the corruption of the soul."


"Body experience... is the centre of creation."

"But we should also not forget the difference between what first motivated me and the work that is the result."


"Sometimes what's right isn't as important as what's profitable."

"To give a body and a perfect form to one's thought, this - and only this - is to be an artist."

"Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is like a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle."


"I'd never painted anything before. I was quite content to take other people's work since I didn't care anyway about the subject matter. I approached subject matter as a scoundrel. I had nothing to say about it whatsoever. I only wanted to make these exciting paintings."


"For I never have seen, and never shall see, that the cessation of the evidence of existence is necessarily evidence of the cessation of existence."

"The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art."


"I don't know what people find or like in me, I'm hopelessly commonplace! Current appreciation of my work is a bit highbrow, I've always considered myself a popular artist."

"I'd always been a news junkie, always read lots of newspapers and watched the Sunday morning news shows on TV and felt strongly about issues of power, control, sexuality and race."
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