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

The writer, making every effort to appear innocent and noble, takes his revenge with the pen; while the murderer, less hypocrtical, takes it with the sword.

 Christopher Spranger, The Effort to Fall, 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

It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself.

 Salvador Dalí, in  Art and Literature

Picasso is a communist. Neither am I.

 Salvador Dalí, in  Art and Literature

Art is anything you can get away with.

 Terence Trent D'Arby, in  Art and Literature

If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.

 Anton Chekhov, (advice to a novice playwright), in  Art and Literature

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

 Gilbert K. Chesterton, in  Art and Literature

No sane man will dance.

 Cicero, in  Art and Literature

The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.

 Tom Clancy, in  Art and Literature

Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

 Joseph Conrad, 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

Mir Bahadur Ali is, as we have seen, incapable of evading the most vulgar of art's temptations: that of being a genius.

 Jorge Luis Borges, "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim", in  Art and Literature

There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless.

 Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote", in  Art and Literature and  Wisdom and Ignorance

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