“Damn everything but the circus!… The average 'painter' 'sculptor' 'poet' 'composer' 'playwright' is a person who cannot leap through a hoop from the back of a galloping horse, make people laugh with a clown's mouth, orchestrate twenty lions.”
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E.E. Cummings208
American poet 1894–1962Related quotes
“The man who cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.”
André Breton (1896–1966) French writer
“The clown may be the source of mirth, but - who shall make the clown laugh?”
Angela Carter book Nights at the Circus
Source: Nights at the Circus
Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824–1895) French writer and dramatist, son of the homonym writer and dramatist
On peut devenir un peintre, un sculpteur, un musicien même à force d'étude; on ne devient pas un auteur dramatique. On l'est tout de suite ou jamais, comme on est blond ou brun, sans le vouloir.
Preface to Le Père Prodigue (1859), in Théatre complet de Al. Dumas fils (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1868-98) vol. 3, p. 199; translation by E. P. Evans from The Atlantic Monthly, May 1890, pp. 584-5.
“I was never the kind of painter or sculptor who kept a shop.”
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet
As quoted in In Our Time : The Artist, BBC Radio 4 (28 March 2002).
Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet
AF, 73; p. 161
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)
Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) Ukrainian & Russian Soviet pianist and composer
Page 136; from his "Music and Life" (1951).
Sergei Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences (1960)
Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter
official document, 1567; as quoted by Bruce Kohl in Titian and Venetian Painting, 1450-1590; publishers Westview Press, 1999, p. 117
In 1567 Titian applied to the Venetian senate for a fifteen-year copyright privilege for engravings, made after his work. The Dutch artist Cornelis Cort produced prints after Titian's work, all made in collaboration, in 1555-56 and 1571-72
1541-1576