|
Subjects | Fact sheet | Samples
Arts, media, and entertainment: Sample quotations
Kingsley Amis
English novelist and poet
I was never an Angry Young Man. I am angry only when I hit my thumb with a hammer.
[On the labelling of authors as 'Angry Young Men', Eton College Chronicle]
Louis Armstrong
US jazz musician and singer
A lot of cats copy the Mona Lisa, but people still line up to see the original.
[Reply when asked whether he objected to people copying his style]
Raymond Chandler
US novelist
When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.
[Letter to Edward Weeks, 18 January 1947]
Salvador Dali
Spanish painter
Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.
[Declaration]
Jean-Luc Godard
French filmmaker and writer
Photography is truth. The cinema is truth 24 times per second.
[Le Petit Soldat]
Stephen Leacock
Canadian political scientist, historian, and humorist
Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
[Garden of Folly, 'The Perfect Salesman']
Yehudi Menuhin
US-born British violinist and conductor
Improvisation is not the expression of accident but rather of the accumulated yearnings, dreams and wisdom of our very
soul.
[Theme and Variations, 1972]
Vaslav Nijinsky
Russian dancer
It just happens. I go up, pause a little and then come down.
[On his incredible elevation, quoted in Christy Adair Woman and Dance; Sylphs and Sirens, 1992]
Sydney Smith
English journalist, clergyman, and wit
I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.
[Quoted in H Pearson The Smith of Smiths]
Frank Lloyd Wright
US architect
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
[The New York Times Magazine]
|
