American Artist Quotes

There's an arc of being. There's a beginning, then the peak is reached and then there's the end. It's like the pole vaulter who begins his run, shoots up, then comes down. At the peak there is no movement. He's neither going up nor going down. It is that moment I wait for.

A lot of good and regular art gets made because of who you talk to. No one is immune to human contact and art is not made in a vacuum.

A nursery rhyme from the American Psychiatric Society:
Monday's kid is passive-aggressive
Tuesday's kid is compulsive-obsessive
Wednesday's kid is hypochondriacal
Thursday's kid is just plain maniacal
Friday's kid is anal-retentive
Saturday's kid is too non-attentive
But the kid who's born on the Sabbath day
defies diagnosis in every way.

No to spectacle no to virtuosity no to transformations and magic and make believe no to glamour and transcendency of the star image no to the heroic no to the anti-heroic no to trash imagery no to involvement of performer or spectator no to style no to camp no to seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer no to eccentricity no to moving or being moved.

The older I get, the one thing I can trust in myself more than anything else is the way I feel about something. When I photograph I try to be as aware of my feelings as I can be to somehow try and get them out of me and onto the film in terms of the way I am responding or seeing the world.

I once read in a Bible commentary that the word "Christian" means "little Christs." What an honor to share Christ's name! We can be bold to call ourselves Christians and bear the stamp of his character and reputation. When people find out the you are a Christian, they should already have an idea of who you are and what you are like simply because you bear such a precious name.

Joni Eareckson Tada

The time approaches when men must take their choice between quiescent, immobile faith and ever-advancing Science - faith, with its medieval consolations, Science, which is incessantly scattering its material blessings in the pathway of life, elevating the lot of man in this world, and unifying the human race.

John William Draper

Everything that I have told you is, of course, a fairy tale. Life is magical, after all. Nothing is safe and everything changes.

Trina Schart Hyman

Is it not the artist who - like our dreams - dissolves the pretenses that hide us from ourselves, disclosing both our self-serving fantasies and our unsuspected potentialities?

When you reach round a dark corner to switch on a light, be careful. Slenderman will often run his finger over the back of your hand. This is the first signal of his interest in you.

Calendar Reform is the final act of history, and the first step toward Earth Regeneration in the cradle of galactic culture.

José Argüelles

We are Afropolitans: not citizens, but Africans of the world.

If I prove extravagant, I shall be more so from ignorance than willfulness. I am not wholly insensible to the pleasures of the world, therefore shall not be governed entirely by necessity; but I flatter myself, at least, in being able to restrain their gratification within due bonds.

Washington Allston

By Interstate 70: a dog skeleton, a vacuum cleaner, TV dinners, a doll, a pie, rolls of carpet.Later, next to the South Platte River: algae, broken concrete, jet contrails, the smell of crude oil. What I hope to document, though not at the expense of surface detail, is the form that underlies this apparent chaos.

Robert Adams (photographer)

I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

What affected me most profoundly was the realization that the sciences of cryptography and mathematics are very elegant, pure sciences. I found that the ends for which these pure sciences are used are less elegant.

Always watch the hands. The hands will tell you everything you need to know.

There is never a question of what to paint but only how to paint.

A lot of my work has to do with not allowing my characters to have an ego in a way that the stomach doesn't have an ego when it's wanting to throw up. It just does it.

But then, I am always being overwhelmed. I require it to sustain life.

Paintings are memories. Memories of the painter who painted them. Memories that can be shared as well. Paintings are things to remember things by.

James Rosenquist

I think that if advanced beings were visiting Earth, we'd know it by their laughter.

Sculpture is for the touch, painting is for the eye. I wanted to make a sculpture for the eye and a painting for the touch.

Richard Artschwager

I unconsciously decided that, even if it wasn't an ideal world, it should be. So I painted only the ideal aspects of it - pictures in which there are no drunken slatterns or self-centered mothers... only foxy grandpas who played baseball with the kids and boys who fished from logs and got up circuses in the backyard.

Norman Rockwell

We do not claim that punning is legitimate wit. Wit consists in combination of ideas, punning in combination of words only. We wonder at the one, but we laugh at the drollery of the other — as the world goes a pun is regarded as an imponderable commodity, all know the rank it holds in the order of pure intellect.