The function of art is to acquaint the beholder with something he has not known before.

The seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition.

Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there. A new idea is a light that illuminates presences which simply had no form before the light fell on them.

The first impression of a work of art is its otherness from reality.

The Past, being in the mode of memory, is closed, inalienable, and irreparable.

Fire is a natural symbol of life and passion, though it is the one element in which nothing can actually live.

The secret of 'fusion' is the fact that the artist's eye sees in nature... an inexhaustible wealth of tension, rhythms, continuities, and contrasts which can be rendered in line and color.

Music is the tonal analogue of emotive life.

The high intellectual value of images, however, lies in the fact that they usually, and perhaps always, fit more than one actual experience.

If a work of art is a projection of feeling, its kinship with organic nature will emerge, no matter through how many transformations, logically and inevitably.

The fairytale is irresponsible; it is frankly imaginary, and its purpose is to gratify wishes, as a dream doth flatter.

The agonizing flames of misery can turn the human heart inside your skull into a breeding ground for virtues.

the skies frighten you when they fill up with dragons, but you know they’re being chased by dreams!

America cultivates best what Germany brought forth.

I'm a giant softy, for sure, but I honestly think these days it's probably considered more masculine to be emotionally connected.

Everybody can tell you how to do it but they never done it

I'd rather frame [Clintons] in terms of what I think we need to do going forward.

The unknown is the province of the student; it is the field for his lifes adventure, and it is a wide field full of beckonings

To save my child, I'd rather go hungry. I got all of Ethiopia inside of me.

There's no such thing as reverse racism.

Most films are rooted in a book or a comic strip, but I don't go out there saying I want to do adaptations.