Art is maybe a subversive activity. There is a certain rebellion when you are an artist at heart, even if only in the art of living.
Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to create literary art, and you decide to hold back, to censor yourself, then you are a fool to yourself and it would be better that you kept your mouth shut and did not speak.
You wouldn't have the same art on the walls at every restaurant or the same waiter uniforms. Neither should you have the same service style at every restaurant.
I'm art. You're art. We are God's greatest works, simple as that.
I believe that it's an author's job to cast his imagination into the far spaces. Your life should - and I think it's inescapable that it will - inform your work. I'm all for using anything that can make your art better, but your intuition should be an equal partner.
Ever since childhood, I've been interested in history and myth. Not just the facts and figures of the past, but everything that contributes to shape our perception of an age: architecture, art, literature and so forth.
I do have a tendency to want to go back to school at all times in my life. Maybe I'll do the Ph.D. in art history when I'm 50, or maybe divinity school. I like teaching, too.
In 'Spinal Tap,' there's the fake historical quality of 'Stonehenge.' It's something the musicians look at with a mystical reverence. In folk music, it's the seriousness with which these people approach their 'art.'
I come from a real working class background, and I didn't know anyone sophisticated - except I saw Edie Sedgewick once at the Art Museum in Philly. She had these black leotards and little black pumps and this big ermine cape and all these white dogs and black sunglasses and black eyes. She was classy!
My individual power is limited. I want to use my high-profile way to wake people up to take action together to do good things. I can only awake them with my performance art and creativity.
The surrealists, and the modern movement in painting as a whole, seemed to offer a key to the strange postwar world with its threat of nuclear war. The dislocations and ambiguities, in cubism and abstract art as well as the surrealists, reminded me of my childhood in Shanghai.
During the '70s I was interested in words and meaning as a way of making art.
My brothers are both 6 ft. 5 in., and if you have younger brothers who are bigger than you then you have to learn the ancient martial art of sarcasm.
Surreal fiction is a sophisticated art form. Events happen divorced from conventional logic, as events in a dream may happen. But unlike dreams, everything in the story contributes to an overall coherent point, impression or emotion.
All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.
Death is imposed only on creatures, not their creations, and has therefore always appeared in art in a broken form: as allegory.
It is a job requirement of U.S. envoys to El Salvador to be skilled in the art of the threat. And Aponte, named ambassador in 2010, is a pro. In particular, she's been tasked with making sure the former insurgent FMLN, which first won the presidency in 2009 and was reelected in 2014, reconciles itself to neoliberal reality.
I've been criticized by my generation, artists from the '70s - and there's nothing more tragic than artists from the '70s still doing art from the '70s - because I blur all these borders between fashion and pop.
I believe in the city as a natural human environment, but we must humanize it. It's art that will re-define public space in the 21st Century. We can make our cities diverse, inspirational places by putting art, dance and performance in all its forms into the matrix of street life.
Salad can get a bad rap. People think of bland and watery iceberg lettuce, but in fact, salads are an art form, from the simplest rendition to a colorful kitchen-sink approach.
Producers are men who will keep their heads in the noisy presence of writers and directors and not be carried away by art in any of its subversive guises. Their task is to guard against the unusual. They are the trusted loyalists of cliche.
If we doubt the power of literature and art to civilise, how come no one has ever been mugged by a person carrying a well-thumbed copy of 'Middlemarch' in his back pocket?
What is the intersection between technology, art and science? Curiosity and wonder, because it drives us to explore, because we're surrounded by things we can't see.
I try to be as optimistic as I can. I feel like that's the beautiful thing about art and music. It can take you places, and they can be a positive influence. A very soothing influence. Honestly, I feel like there's enough pain and terrible things that happen in life. That's beautiful thing in art, you can really idealize things.
Acting is the art of being and existing, and not being fake.
If you are handed something, it's a blessing and a curse. Look at hip hop artists, they produced everything themselves. Even people like Robert De Niro are getting into production. Again, it's art vs. marketing. Not everyone can take the risk. You have to break a few eggs to make a good omelet.
If art is singular expression, then by nature, the best art is controversial. But when art stirs debate for reasons besides its artistic integrity, that's when things get bent.
When you're in New York, people don't say, 'We're happy you came to New York.' In D.C., people thank you for coming here and bringing art here.
The essential argument in the book, 'Art as Therapy,' is that art enjoys such financial and cultural prestige that it's easy to forget the confusion that persists about what it's really for.
The magic question is, 'What for?' But art is not for anything. Art is the ultimate goal.
Masterful politicians and effective agents of change tend to succeed by singling out and making salient some aspect of a nation's self-understanding, sparking a sense of recognition - and ultimately moving voters in their favor. Obama made it into an art form.
It would be obvious for me to do conceptual art, and I think I've done it already with smashing bass guitars and whatever - I consider that as conceptual.
I haven't mastered the art of sitting and smiling.
The Elgin Marbles were supposed to be on the Parthenon. For many works of art, a museum is an artificial setting - a zoo, not a natural habitat.
There are so many people who want to be the next person on 'Home and Away,' or they just want to be on the cover of a magazine, and they don't really understand the craft. They're not interested in theatre, they're not interested in the art.
One of the things I like about music is it's an abstract art, totally abstract, where you can convey an emotion, which I find amazing.
