Art Quotes

"A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way."

"The fiction writer is an observer, first, last, and always."

"The serious writer is not at liberty to ignore such phenomena as grace."

"I prefer the grotesque to the sentimental because writing graphically about the grotesque forces us to look at the world as it is."

"Fiction should be both transparent and mysterious."

"The worst of the modern inventions of emotion is that the writer is always conscious of adjectives while writing."

"It is better to be unfinished than well-finished if it means only that you have finished without looking."

"A story is a vehicle for meaning in the most direct way possible."

"The question of a work's popularity is not a concern of the novelist, but of the critic and the reader."

"A writer practices his craft within the context of his own experience."

"I usually work in a short story form and I never have written a novel."

"The novelist cannot do anything else but write novels unless he repudiates the whole thing."

"A story must have a spine, a feeling, a conviction."

"The writer's true country is his own world; he should not flee from it."

"A writer has to have a temperament before he can know a subject."

"A story is a complete act, and not an account of it."

"The writer is always trying to convey what he cannot say."

"Entertainment is the only thing keeping us from hanging ourselves."

"Irony is the predominant intellectual stance of modern culture."

"Art is the mechanism by which humans transcend their own mortality."

"Entertainment culture encourages us to never really think deeply about anything."

"Art is the only human activity that has no use-value, which is precisely its value."

"Art is the effort to make something of the chaos of experience."

"Art gives form to the formless chaos of human experience."

"I hate actors. All of em."

"Art is the expression of what society won't admit."

"You know, the remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good."

"In art, as in life, there are no shortcuts to authenticity."

"Art is not about making people happy; it is about making them think."

"The role of the artist is to bear witness to truth."