Quotes about paint
page 4

“I do what many dream of, all their lives,
— Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
And fail in doing. I could count twenty such
On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
Who strive — you don't know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat —
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter) — so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.”

Robert Browning Men and Women

"Andrea del Sarto", line 70
"Less is more" is often misattributed to architects Buckminster Fuller or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It is something of a motto for minimalist philosophy. It was used in 1774 by Christoph Martin Wieland.
Men and Women (1855)

God, Dreams, Light, Heart

“I am working from morning to evening, brimming with energy.. I'm fencing and wrestling with the sun. And what a sun it is! In order to paint here, one would need gold and precious stones. It is quite remarkable.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote in a letter from Cote d'Azure to sculptor and friend Auguste Rodin, 1 February 1888; as cited in R. Gordon and A. Forge (1983), Monet, p. 123
1870 - 1890

Sun, Painting

“I know I got a bad reputation
'Walk around, always mad' reputation
'Leave a pretty girl sad' reputation
Start a Fight Club, Brad reputation Close your eyes and let the word paint a thousand pictures
One good girl is worth a thousand bitches
Bound.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Bound 2
Lyrics, Yeezus (2013)

Sadness, Girl, Fight, Painting

“We want to decipher skies and paintings, go behind these starry backgrounds or these painted canvases and, like kids trying to find a gap in a fence, try to look through the cracks in the world.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

World, Painting

“A story isn't a charcoal sketch, where every stroke lies on the surface to be seen. It's an oil painting, filled with layers that the author must uncover so carefully to show its beauty.”

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (1984) Novelist

Beauty, Painting

“You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing

Pleasure, Painting

“One the next corner stood a cinder block restaurant with a hand-painted sign that read CHICKEN & WAFFLES. There was a queue of twenty people outside.
“You Americans have the strangest taste. What planet is this?”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

People, Reading, Painting

“She told me once that the year she went to England she painted her buttons yellow so she would remember what the sun felt like.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

Sun, Painting

“Best not to mix the past with the present. The present paints the past with gold. The past paints the present with lead.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Past, Painting

“He whirled in the water and grinned at me. Damn, he was a handsome bastard. I realized he was half-naked. Blue swirls of tattoos painted his chest. When God made that chest, he did to tempt women.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

Women, God, Water, Tattoo

“Even castles in the sky can do with a fresh coat of paint.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

Painting

“Painting is literature in colors. Literature is painting in language.”

Pramoedya Ananta Toer book Bumi Manusia

Source: Bumi Manusia

Color, Literature, Painting

“The water crumbles on it's way down as my hands and feet push me forward. The world is lightening, taking shape, and turning to color. It feels like it's being painted around me.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

World, Color, Way, Feeling

“They wore their strange beauty like war paint.”

Holly Black book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

War, Beauty, Painting

“Painting is not very difficult when you don't know how; but when you know, oh! then, it's another matter.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

posthumous quotes, The Shop-Talk of Edgar Degas', (1961)

Painting

“My god, Sage. Your eyes. How have I never noticed them? When you stand in the light. They're amazing… like molten gold. I could paint those… They're beautiful. You're beautiful.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

God, Beauty, Light, Painting

“The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter I-V, Chapter II.

Time, Painting

“and if I have any advice to give to anybody it’s this: take up watercolor painting.”

Charles Bukowski book Notes of a Dirty Old Man

Source: Notes of a Dirty Old Man

Painting

“This is less teaching than damage control. You may as well paint a house that’s on fire.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Painting, Housing

“And if my heart was a canvas, every square inch of it would be painted over with you.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Variant: These pictures are my heart. And if my heart was a canvas, every square inch of it would be painted over with you.
Source: Lady Midnight

Heart, Painting, For Him, For Boyfriend

“At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can.”

Toni Morrison book Tar Baby

Tar Baby (1981)

Life, World, Beauty, Painting

“Every conversation, every cuddle, aver kiss and caress, even every disagreement, adds another brushstroke to the picture of home you paint with the days and hours of your life.”

Thomas Kinkade (1958–2012) American painter of popular realistic, bucolic, and idyllic subjects

Life, Home, Kiss, Painting

“To an untrained eye, need and love were as easily mistaken for each other as the real master's painting and a forgery.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

Love, Painting

“No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society (1947)

Hell, Painting

“My dream is to walk around the world. A smallish backpack, all essentials neatly in place. A camera. A notebook. A traveling paint set. A hat. Good shoes. A nice pleated (green?) skirt for the occasional seaside hotel afternoon dance.”

Maira Kalman (1949) Israeli American artist and creator of children's books

Source: The Principles of Uncertainty

World, Dreams, Shoe, Travel

“If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I'm sure it's a good one—and the same goes for paintings.”

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) American poet

World, Reading, Painting

“It is too easy to say 'what if' and paint a picture of a perfect world.”

Darren Shan book The Lake of Souls

Source: The Lake of Souls

World, Painting, Perfection

“Her imagination painted Georgie twenty years later, sitting in leg irons before some Broken psychiatrist. "Well, you see, it all started with bubbles…”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: On the Edge

Imagination, Painting

“Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour," she'd ask us, "when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

Time, Painting

“They were all brilliant. They wrote books and painted pictures, and if they ever stopped talking, which I was sure they would never do, they planned to change the world.”

Gloria Whelan book Listening for Lions

Source: Listening for Lions

Books, World, Change, Painting

“Do you know what the difference is between Friendship and Love? Friendship is the photograph, Love is the oil painting.”

Frank Delaney (1942–2017) Irish writer and journalist

Source: The Matchmaker of Kenmare

Love, Friendship, Painting

“But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano / act / paint / write a decent play?"
Yes… the same age you will be if you don't.”

Julia Cameron book The Artist's Way

Source: The Artist's Way

Age, Learning, Time, Painting

“If London is a watercolor, New York is an oil painting.”

Peter Shaffer (1926–2016) English playwright and screenwriter

The New York Times, April 13, 1975.

Painting

“… for we are all amateurs at life, but if we do not focus too much on our mistakes, a miraculous picture emerges. And we learn that it's not the beauty of the image that warrants our gratitude--it's the chance to paint.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: Finding Noel

Life, Beauty, Learning, Chance

“It is terrible to have to ask for anything ever. We wish we were something that needed nothing, like paint. But even paint needs repainting.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Painting

“Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction.”

Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter

Imagination, Science, Painting

“Last year when my grandma fell and broke her hip she couldn't paint her toenails anymore. So my grandpa started doing it for her, even after he fell and broke his hip, too. For me, that's love.”

David Ebershoff book The 19th Wife

Source: The 19th Wife

Love, Grandma, Painting

“That's the van? It looks like a rotting banana."
This was undeniable - Eric had painted the van a neon shade of yellow, and it was blotched with dings and rust like splotches of decay.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Painting

“Why all these paintings of you? Because I'm an artist, Emma. These pictures are my heart. And if my heart was a canvas, every square inch of it would be painted over with you.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

Heart, Painting

“People are fond of using military terms to describe what they do.
We call it bombing when we go out painting, when of course it's more
like entertaining the troops in a neutral zone, during peacetime in a
country without an army.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Source: Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall

People, Painting, Country

“Da Vinci painted one Mona Lisa. Beethoven composed one Fifth Symphony. And God made one version of you.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

God, Painting

“Money has lost its narrative quality the way painting did once upon a time. Money is talking to itself.”

Don DeLillo book Cosmopolis

Source: Cosmopolis

Money, Way, Time, Painting

“Your attitude is like the minds paintbrush. It can paint everything in bright, vibrant colors-creating a masterspiece.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Source: Attitude 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know

Color, Painting

“I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Quoted from: Antonio Rodríguez, "Una pintora extraordinaria," Así (17 March 1945)
1925 - 1945
Variant: I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.

Painting

“Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.”

Yann Martel book Beatrice and Virgil

Source: Beatrice and Virgil

Life, Music, Sense, Painting

“I learned to play the instruments of war," he said, "and paint in blood.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

War, Learning, Painting

“A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.”

Robert McKee (1941) American academic specialised in seminars for screenwriters

Source: Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Art, Music, Silence, Dance

“What any true painting touches is an absence - an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

Source: The Shape of a Pocket

Loss, Painting

“Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Truth, World, Singing, Painting

“I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Imagination, Nature, Tree, Painting

“Acheron: You're really not right, are you?
Nick: Yeah. I know. It was all the paint chips I ate as a kid. They were good, but chromosomally damaging”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Variant: You’re really not right, are you?
Yeah, I know. It was all the paint chips I ate as a kid. They were good, but chromosomally damaging. (Nick)
Source: Infinity

Painting

“I wasn’t a nerd, mind you, but I’d spent a lot of my youth studying Epics, so I’d had limited experience with social interaction. I mixed with ordinary people about the same way that a bucket of paint mixed with a bag of gerbils.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Firefight

People, Youth, Way, Study

“When a girl uses six derogatory adjectives in her attempt to paint the portrait of the loved one, it means something. One may indicate a merely temporary tiff. Six is big stuff.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Source: Jeeves in the Morning

Love, Girl, Painting

“Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Variant: No, I say, it's fine.
Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains.
Just great, I say. Really.
Source: Fight Club

Painting

“I knew a girl, once, immortal like me-"

"And she was with someone mortal?" said Alec. "What happened?"

"He died," Magnus said. There was a finality to the way he said it that spoke of a deeper grief than words could paint.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Way, Girl, Painting

“If only it were so easy to pick up the broken pieces of life, glue them back together, and cover them with paint like nothing had ever happened.”

Patti Callahan Henry American writer

Source: Between The Tides

Life, Painting

“Autumn that year painted the countryside in vivid shades of scarlet, saffron and russet, and the days were clear and crisp under harvest skies.”

Sharon Kay Penman book Time and Chance

Source: Time and Chance

Autumn, Painting, Beauty

“In a fair fight, the don's man would almost certainly paint the walls with Locke and Calo's blood, so it stood to reason that this fight would have to be as unfair as possible.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

Fight, Painting

“The laws of physics is the canvas God laid down on which to paint his masterpiece”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Source: Angels & Demons

God, Law, Painting

“A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

quote from Georges Jeanniot, in Souvenirs sur Degas (Memories of Degas, 1933)
quotes, undated

People, Painting

“Look at your body—
A painted puppet, a poor toy
Of jointed parts ready to collapse,
A diseased and suffering thing
With a head full of false imaginings.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

Description: from the The Dhammapada
Source: The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)

Disease, Imagination, Suffering, Parting

“How memories lie to us. How time coats the ordinary with gold. How it breaks the heart to go back and attempt to re-live them. How crushed we are when we discover that the gold was merely gold-plating thinly coated over lead, chalk and peeling paint.”

Henry Rollins book Black Coffee Blues

Source: Black Coffee Blues

Lie, Memory, Time, Heart

“Sorry I painted the word 'twat' on your garage door.”

David Shrigley (1968) British artist

Painting

“No other human being, no woman, no poem or music, book, or painting can replace alcohol in its power to give man the illusion of real creation.”

Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) French writer and film director

Alcohol, Books, Music, Painting

“There are only four great arts: music, painting, sculpture, and ornamental pastry- architecture being perhaps the least banal derivative of the latter.”

Julia Child My Life in France

Source: My Life in France

Art, Music, Painting

“I hate myself for loving you and the weakness that it showed. You were just a painted face on a trip down to suicide road.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Love, Hate, Suicide, Painting

“It’s the final word in camouflage. Forget chucking weights around. Peeta should have gone into his private session with the Gamemakers and painted himself into a tree. Or a boulder. Or a muddy bank full of weeds.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Tree, Painting, Forgetting

“The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

Time, Painting, Night, Good Night

“Her last painting was of you, slouching against the front door: only your drowning I-had-a-lousy-Third-World-childhood-and-all-I-got-was-this-attitude eyes recognizable.”

Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her

Source: This Is How You Lose Her

World, Childhood, Painting

“A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

Painting

“He looked like those paintings of baby angels - what do you call them, hubbubs? No cherubs. That's it. He looked like a cherub who'd turned middle-aged in a trailer park.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Age, Angels, Baby, Painting

“Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Life, World, Color, Mood

“She was all the things I wasn't. And i was all the things she wasn't. she could paint circles around anyone; I couldn't even draw a straight line. She was never into sports; I've always been. Her hand, it fit mine.”

Jodi Picoult book The Pact

Source: The Pact

Sport, Drawing, Painting

“With every experience, you alone are painting your own canvas, thought by thought, choice by choice.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Painting

“I thought it'd be something cooler, like a van with 'Death to Demons' painted on the outside, or...”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Simon to Jace, pg. 132
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Death, Painting

“Abe swept in, resplendent in a gray and yellow suit that coordinated bafflingly well with Adrian's paint job.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

Painting

“You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.”

Dale Carnegie book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Life, Singing, Painting

“Leonardo's Mona Lisa is just a thousand thousand smears of paint. Michelangelo's David is just a million hits with a hammer. We're all of us a million bits put together the right way.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Diary

Source: Diary

Way, Painting

“A vocation is not something you slap on, like a coat of paint, and change whenever you want. A vocation is built into you. You have no choice. If you try to do something else, you fail.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Demon King

Change, Painting

“Better that we leave the paint behind," Hans told her, "than ever forget the music.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Music, Painting, Forgetting

“One guy wore nothing but a Speedo. He’d painted himself blue and was armed only with a baseball bat. Across his chest were the words COME AT ME, BRO.”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

Guy, Painting

“You've influenced the world not because you wanted to hug it and cuddle it and call it sweet thing, but because one day you wanted to beat the crap out of somebody but you didn't. You made a painting instead.”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

World, Painting

“When you paint Spring, do not paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots, but just paint Spring. To paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots is to paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots - it is not yet painting Spring.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Spring, Painting

“But Valentine, why despair, why always paint the future in such sombre hues?" Maximilien asked.

"Because, my friend, I judge it by the past.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Past, Future, Painting, Despair

“Sunrise paints the sky with pinks and the sunset with peaches. Cool to warm. So is the progression from childhood to old age.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Age, Childhood, Painting

“It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

World, Painting

“When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don't. I have a knack for disturbing.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Painting

“I'd been painting rats for three years before someone said 'that's a clever anagram of art' and I had to pretend I'd known that all along.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Source: Wall and Piece (2005)

Art, Painting

“The land is all too shallow
It is painted on the sky
And trembles like the wind-shook rain
When the Raven King passed by”

Susanna Clarke (1959) British author

Source: Jonathan Strange i pan Norrell. Tom 3

Painting

“If you were the wall, what would you rather be? Dreary and dull, or alive with paint?"
"Walls can't think!"
"That doesn't stop them from caring.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Emperor's Soul

Source: The Emperor's Soul

Thinking, Painting

“You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Nature, Painting, Perfection

“Asleep she was a painting of a fire. Awake she was the fire itself”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Painting

“To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate — unlike most films.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/alan-moore-the-reluctant-hero-64407.html <br class="br">Context: If I write a crappy comic book, it doesn't cost the budget of an emergent Third World nation. When you've got these kinds of sums involved in creating another two hours of entertainment for Western teenagers, I feel it crosses the line from being merely distasteful to being wrong. To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate — unlike most films.

Books, Painting

“What are you doing here?”
All right, he was standing in front of an easel, holding a paint palette and brush. “Taxidermy?” he responded with just a touch of his own sarcasm.”

Robyn Carr American writer

Source: Wild Man Creek

Painting

“Paintings are seldom guilty and often framed for crimes they did not commit. Some cover holes-holes in walls, holes in lives. Some make holes-in wallets, holes in hearts… in negative space.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Heart, Painting

“Atheists don't hate fairies, leprechauns, or unicorns because they don't exist. It is impossible to hate something that doesn't exist. Atheists — like the painting experts hated the painter — hate God because He does exist.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)
Source: You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions from Angry Skeptics

God, Hate, Painting