Music, Art and Madness Quotations and Proverbs

* some views expressed in these quotations not neccesarily endorsed by the author of this file.
* for entertainment only - history is not an exact science - dates and quotes not guaranteed for accuracy.

Added for February 2006:

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.

There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.
  • Camille Paglia, interview, International Herald Tribune (April 26, 1991)
The most terrifying verse I know is "Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream".
  • Joan Didion (1934- )
Perfection, which is the passion of so many people, does not interest me. What is important in art is to vibrate oneself and make others vibrate.
  • Georges Enesco
Those who love art and seek to understand it will always be anxious to see more, and if they are wise will look at certain objects they admire again and again. [...] In art, a discerning if limited taste is preferable to enthusiastic voracity.
  • Paul Johnson, _Art: A New History_
Let's face it, some boys and girls become writers because the only workplace they're willing to visit is the one inside their heads.
  • Arthur Krystal, American editor and essayist, The New Yorker, April 26 1999
There are no shortcuts to anyplace worth going.
  • Beverly Sills
Postmodernism is a very bogus term. I think it mostly applies to kitsch. I don't know of a single important artist who would ever even allow the term 'postmodern artist.' It's a creation of arts journalists. To me, it's a polite way of talking about failed art.
  • Hilton Kramer,newcriterion.com/weblog/2006/02/
An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.
  • Pablo Ruiz y Picasso
I may not be in control of anything else, but I am in control of my body.
  • dialogue, 'The Carpenters: The Untold Story' {Karen Carpenter}
My whole trick is to keep the tune well out in front. If I play Tchaikovsky, I play his melodies and skip his spiritual struggle.
  • Liberace (1919-1987)
Artists are not, on the whole, intellectuals; they do not try to be particularly articulate and, when they do speak of their art, they do not do so in the terms of the critic or connoisseur. But that is not their job. They simply do it.
  • Peter Ackroyd, _J.M.W. Turner_
Searching is half the fun: life is much more manageable when thought of as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party.
  • Jimmy Buffett (1946- )
No other song I know tells so purely, so truly, the story of the generations, of the way the young leave, of how the old die, of how we return home too late.
  • Phillip Adams (1939- ) on 'Danny Boy'
I got started dancing because I knew that was one way to meet girls.
  • Eugene Curran[Gene] Kelly (1912 -1996)

 

 

 

 

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