Art Quote by Marcel Proust

A work should contain its total meaning within itself and should impress it on the spectator before he even knows the subject.

— Henri Matisse

The motif must always be set down in a simple way, easily grasped and understood by the beholder. By the elimination of superfluous detail,…

— Alfred Sisley

In exposition and in argument, the writer must likewise never lose his hold upon the concrete; and even when he is dealing with general…

— William Strunk, Jr

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and…

— Marcel Duchamp

It is an author's primary duty to entertain. Sling out all the philosophical terms, but keep the reader turning the page.

— Susan Howatch

The ideal, it seems to me, is to show things happening and allow the reader to decide what they mean.

— John M. Ford

'The Author' is a play about responsibility, how active we are as spectators and how responsible we are for what we choose to look…

— Tim Crouch

“The fact of the matter is that readers and audiences are never blank slates: individuals see in a work whatever they need to see…

— Christopher Bram

“A writer's task is to interpret his world as he sees it, if not to make it understood, at least to make it understandable.”

— Leonard Walker

A critic should always strive to recapture the sense of wonder and surprise with which he first beheld a now-familiar work of art.

— Terry Teachout

It is the duty of the writer to describe.

— Virginia Woolf

“It is wrong to assume that art needs the spectator in order to be. The film runs on without any eyes. The spectator cannot…

— Jim Morrison