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 November 2007:

Art is not about avoiding controversy or ensuring that everyone leaves feeling morally uplifted.

I couldn't wait for success, so I went on ahead without it.
  • Jonathan Winters
You must have the devil in you to succeed in any of the arts.
  • Voltaire (1694-1778)
 The pork chop came over and beat the crap out of my cup of coffee. It tried to defend itself, but it was too weak.
  • Tom Waits
 I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring.
  • Dodie Smith (1896-1990) _I Capture The Castle_ [1948], Chapter 7
 Wit's the noblest frailty of the mind.
  • Thomas Shadwell (1642-1692) _A True Widow_ [1679], Act II, Scene I
 The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.
  • G. K. Chesterton, The Maniac, Orthodoxy
 A comedian can only last till he either takes himself serious or his audience takes him serious.
  • Will Rogers (1879-1935)
 at 25. ... I used to feel I was secretary to someone named Norman Mailer, (and) to meet him you had to meet me first.
  • Norman Mailer
 It is only by the deepest suffering that one acquires the authority in the art of the comic.
  • Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
 I envy people who can just look at a sunset. I wonder how you can shoot it. There is nothing more grotesque to me than a vacation.
  • Dustin Hoffman (quoted in the Observer, Feb. 19, 1989)
 The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
  • William James, Collected Essays, 1920
 Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view [...]
  • Marcel Proust (1871-1922) _The Maxims of Marcel Proust_ [1948]
 Your story is impossible, ridiculous, fantastic, mad, and obviously the ravings of a disordered mind," Hermann said. "And I believe every word of it.
  • Kieth Laumer, _The Other Side of Time_ (1965)
 A narcissist is in love with themselves; >> an egoist is just full of themselves.
  • Mrs. Morgan Freeman
 My notion about any artist is that we honor him best by reading him, by playing his music, by seeing his plays or by looking at his pictures. [...] Let's play him more.
  • Jacques Barzun, interview with John C. Tibbetts
 Do whatever you may, with whatever you got, wherever you are, whenever you can.
  • -- [obq]

 

 

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