Art and Literature

A painting in a museum probably hears more foolish remarks than anything else in the world.

Edmond Jules Goncourt, in Art and Literature

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.

Gilbert Highet, in Art and Literature

I live for books.

Thomas Jefferson, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.

Samuel Johnson, in Art and Literature

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

Samuel Johnson, in Art and Literature and Work and Recreation

If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it better not come at all.

John Keats, in Art and Literature

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

Flannery O'Connor, in Art and Literature

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

Flannery O'Connor, in Art and Literature

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

P. J. O'Rourke, in Art and Literature

Learning music by reading about it is like making love by mail.

Luciano Pavarotti, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

Art is the lie that makes us realize the truth.

Pablo Picasso, in Art and Literature

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist after one grows up.

Pablo Picasso, in Art and Literature

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

Elvis Presley, in Art and Literature

I choose a block of marble and chop off everything I don't need.

François-Auguste Rodin, (on how he created his statues), in Art and Literature

There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.

George Bernard Shaw, in Art and Literature

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

Igor Stravinsky, in Art and Literature

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody has read.

Mark Twain, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.

Mark Twain, in Art and Literature

I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

Mark Twain, in Art and Literature

Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.

Mark Twain, in Art and Literature