American Artist Quotes

Experience has shown that the more fascinating the subject, the less observant the photographer.

Andreas Feininger

If I had a hammer, I'd build a city on stilts so my feet would stay dry when God's wine glass tilts. If I had a shovel, I'd dig a hole in the dirt and I'll be hiding when his drunken stupor lands upon earth

I often compare my method of working to that of a well-meaning freed woman in a Northern state who is attempting to delineate the horrors of Southern slavery but with next to no resources, other than some paper and a pen knife and some people she'd like to kill.

People like me, who care about printing, constitute the tiniest lunatic fringe in the nation.

The power of a painting has to come from the inside out, not the outside in. It's not just an image. It's an image with a body and that body has to contain its spirit...What's behind it decides everything. How it starts will define how it ends.

I value the referential quality of art, the fact that a work can allude to things or states of being without in any way representing them.

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

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.

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

I wanted to change history and preserve humanity. But in the process I changed myself and preserved my own.

Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything.

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 wish I could have known earlier that you have all the time you'll need right up to the day you die.

William T. Wiley

I was brought in, not in the photographic department at all, I was brought in on a thing called Special Skills. I was to do posters, pamphlets, murals, propaganda in general, you know.

Dear Lord, I've been asked, nay commanded, to thank Thee for the Christmas turkey before us... a turkey which was no doubt a lively, intelligent bird... a social being... capable of actual affection... nuzzling its young with almost human-like compassion. Anyway, it's dead and we're gonna eat it. Please give our respects to its family..

Berkeley Breathed

I TOOK THE PIECES YOU THREW AWAY AND
PUT THEM TOGATHER [sic] BY NIGHT AND DAY
WASHED BY RAIN DRIED BY SUN A MILLION PIECES ALL IN ONE

Success based on anything but internal fulfillment is bound to be empty.

Martha Friedman

The photographer is the contemporary being par excellence; through his eyes the now becomes the past.

Berenice Abbott

The reason for the survival of the award system is purely commercial.

If half the engineering effort and public interest that go into the research of the American bosom had gone into our guided-missile program, we would now be running hot-dog stands on the moon.

She's my friend, the boy said simply. That's who she is and that's enough for me. As Minli looked at the buffalo boy, aglow with happiness against his poor surroundings, she saw it was enough for him. More than enough, as the smile that kept curling up on his face told her.

There is much wisdom that may be learned before a peat fire.

Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle

You can write a letter with a typewriter, a pencil, or a crayon. What you have to say is the important thing.

The worship leader God is after is the one whose heart is captured by Him.

I absolutely hate technology, and I'm computer illiterate, and I never use any labor-saving devices although I'm not convinced that a computer is a labor-saving device.