“The point is, art never stopped a war and never got anybody a job. That was never its function. Art cannot change events. But it can change people. It can affect people so that they are changed... because people are changed by art – enriched, ennobled, encouraged – they then act in a way that may af…”— Leonard Bernstein, goodreads.com
“The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another…and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.”— Leonard Bernstein, goodreads.com
“Any great art work … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.”— Leonard Bernstein, goodreads.com
“Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning ... except its own.”— Leonard Bernstein, amazon.com
“Music . . . can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.”— Leonard Bernstein, goodreads.com
“Bit by bit, putting it together... Piece by piece, only way to make a work of art. Every moment makes a contribution, Every little detail plays a part. Having just the vision's no solution, Everything depends on execution, Putting it together, that's what counts.”— Stephen Sondheim, en.wikipedia.org
“Work is what you do for others, liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.”— Stephen Sondheim, en.wikipedia.org
“And if I should paint a picture too That showed the loveliness of you My art would be like my heart and me Dedicated to you”— John Coltrane, open.spotify.com
“A man cannot understand the art he is studying if he only looks for the end result without taking the time to delve deeply into the reasoning of the study.”— Miyamoto Musashi, goodreads.com
“I do not paint by copying nature. Everything I do springs from my wild imagination.”— Paul Gaugin, amazon.com
“Freely and madly; you will make progress... Above all, don't sweat over a painting; a great sentiment can be rendered immediately... Don't copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amide nature, extrapolate art from it and concentrate on what you will create as a result.”— Paul Gaugin, amazon.com
“In order to produce something new, you have to return to the original source, to the childhood of mankind.”— Paul Gaugin, amazon.com
“In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. And in the end, doesn't the revolutionary's work become official, once the State takes it over?”— Paul Gaugin, amazon.com
“I am leaving in order to have peace and quiet, to be rid of the influence of civilization. I want only to do simple, very simple art, and to be able to do that, I have to immerse myself in virgin nature, see no one but savages, live their life, with no other thought in mind but to render, the way a…”— Paul Gaugin, amazon.com
“Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature's means.”— Paul Gaugin, amazon.com
“A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it.”— Paul Gaugin, amazon.com
“Many people say that I don't know how to draw because I don't draw particular forms. When will they understand that execution, drawing and color (in other words, style) must be in harmony with the poem?”— Paul Gaugin, en.wikiquote.org
“This Cézanne, that you ask me for is a pearl of exceptional quality and I already have refused three hundred francs for it; it is one of my most treasured possessions, and except in absolute necessity, I would give up my last shirt before the picture.”— Paul Gaugin, en.wikiquote.org