“Contemporary art hates you.”

Interview with Mark Feeney, "David Hockney keeps seeking new avenues of exploration" http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2006/02/26/david_hockney_keeps_seeking_new_avenues_of_exploration/ Boston Globe (26 February 2006)
2000s

Russian Novelists (1887), page 141 (translated by Jane Loring Edmands)

Speech, London (10 March 1880).
Context: Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement: a sanded floor and whitewashed walls, and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the smoke with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings?
So I say, if you cannot learn to love real art; at least learn to hate sham art and reject it. It is not because the wretched thing is so ugly and silly and useless that I ask you to cast it from you; it is much more because these are but the outward symbols of the poison that lies within them; look through them and see all that has gone to their fashioning, and you will see how vain labour, and sorrow, and disgrace have been their companions from the first — and all this for trifles that no man really needs!

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2008

What I Believe (1938)
Context: Democracy is not a beloved Republic really, and never will be. But it is less hateful than other contemporary forms of government, and to that extent it deserves our support. It does start from the assumption that the individual is important, and that all types are needed to make a civilization. It does not divide its citizens into the bossers and the bossed — as an efficiency-regime tends to do. The people I admire most are those who are sensitive and want to create something or discover something, and do not see life in terms of power, and such people get more of a chance under a democracy than elsewhere. They found religions, great or small, or they produce literature and art, or they do disinterested scientific research, or they may be what is called "ordinary people", who are creative in their private lives, bring up their children decently, for instance, or help their neighbours. All these people need to express themselves; they cannot do so unless society allows them liberty to do so, and the society which allows them most liberty is a democracy.

Former queen of Iran on assembling Tehran's art collection http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/01/queen-iran-art-collection, The Guardian, (August 1, 2012).
Interviews

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Hercules Furens (The Madness of Hercules), lines 353; (Lycus)
Alternate translation: To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power (translator unknown).
Tragedies

26
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), The Catholic Writer Today (2013)