Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.

Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.

When I was a boy, unconsciously, spontaneously I learned the art of telling ironic stories.

It seems to me opera is just as relevant as an expressive art as anything else.

Our most intimate contact with civilizations long since dust has been through the art which has survived them.

One might not think of light as a matter of fact, but I do. And it is, as I said, as plain and open and direct an art as you will ever find.

Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.

There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.

Of all lies, art is the least untrue.

The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it.

You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it.

The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

But I had two very special people who helped to take my style to the next level. Thank God for my first MC Cowboy and my first student Grand Wizard Theodore, and to go out after creating this art form and finding everyone jamming to it - that too was pretty scary.

Now, the language that had grown up and formed itself on those principles is what one is dealing with, and the problem is to bring a work of art in that medium into another medium formed on different principles and heard and understood in a different way.