The Galaxy of Quotes

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.

Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics -- a rational ethics -- as a precondition of rebirth.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence. The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Most authors steal their works, or buy.

Science is what you know, philosophy what you don't know.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

Style is what gives value and currency to thoughts.

The word of man is the most durable of all material.

Our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than fact.

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art.

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

The real actor has a direct line to the collective heart.

My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.

I'll play with it first and tell you what it is later.

God is subtle, but He is not malicious. I cannot believe that God plays dice with the world.

I never said all actors are cattle, what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.

Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.

There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it.

Drama is life with the dull parts cut out of it.

Television has brought back murder into the home -- where it belongs.

There is nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever.

The upshot was, my paintings must burn that English artists might finally learn.

Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory.

The upshot was, my paintings must burn that English artists might finally learn.