Art Quotes

Beauty, expression, and the human need to create. Artists and thinkers on why art matters.

21093 quotes

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"I have no interest in art that is simply decorative and therefore impermanent."
Pier Paolo Pasolini
P
"Art must disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed."
Pier Paolo Pasolini
P
"The role of cinema is to reveal hidden truths."
Pier Paolo Pasolini
F
"The artist must capture not what is seen, but what is felt."
Federigo Tozzi
F
"The most honest art emerges from our deepest desperation."
Federigo Tozzi
F
"Art is the language of what cannot be said in words."
Federigo Tozzi
E
"Art is the only truth that matters."
Elsa Morante
E
"Art allows us to speak the unspeakable."
Elsa Morante
E
"Art is the immortal part of human culture."
Elsa Morante
E
"Art is the language through which we speak when words fail us."
Elio Vittorini
E
"The artist's role is to hold up a mirror to society and ask difficult questions."
Elio Vittorini
P
"Art is a way of telling truth that facts alone cannot convey"
Primo Levi
G
"Art teaches us that life itself is a work in progress, never finished."
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
C
"Writing is a disease, but it is a wonderful disease."
Cesare Pavese
C
"Wine is bottled poetry."
Cesare Pavese
C
"Acting is not being. It is the perfect art of fake sincerity."
Cesare Pavese
"The poet's task is to restore clarity to a world obscured by habit and indifference."
Salvatore Quasimodo
"Art is the rebellion of those who refuse to forget."
Salvatore Quasimodo
"Art transforms suffering into something that transcends pain itself."
Salvatore Quasimodo
"The poet's gift is to make the invisible visible."
Salvatore Quasimodo
"The act of creation is a conversation with eternity."
Salvatore Quasimodo
P
"Cinema is a language that speaks to the unconscious before the conscious mind has time to analyze."
Pier Paolo Pasolini
P
"Art must disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed."
Pier Paolo Pasolini
P
"Every image contains within it a politics of representation."
Pier Paolo Pasolini
P
"Cinema is the art form closest to truth because it captures ambiguity."
Pier Paolo Pasolini
P
"Art without commitment to truth is merely decoration."
Pier Paolo Pasolini
P
"Cinema speaks to us before consciousness intervenes."
Pier Paolo Pasolini
P
"The artist's responsibility is to complicate, not simplify."
Pier Paolo Pasolini
F
"The artist's burden is to see what others refuse to look at."
Federigo Tozzi
F
"Art is the lie that makes us see truth."
Federigo Tozzi