Art imitates nature as well as it can, as a pupil follows his master; thus it is a sort of grandchild of God.

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.

All art is a revolt against man’s fate.

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.

The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.

I hate the whole race. There is no believing a word they say—your professional poets, I mean—there never existed a more worthless set than Byron and his friends for example.

I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do—that was one of my favorite things about it—and when I first did it, I felt perverse.

If we pretend to respect the artist at all, we must allow him his freedom of choice, in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify. Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions.

If my books had been any worse I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better I should not have come.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mold, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.

Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.