Βένια Κουντούρη > Βένια's Quotes

“It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when they have lost their way.”
― Rollo May

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”
― Frank Zappa

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

“Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”
― Pablo Picasso

“I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”
― Pablo Picasso

“Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.”
― Picasso

“Good artists copy; great artists steal.”
― Pablo Picasso

“When I know your soul, I will paint your eyes”
― Amedeo Modigliani

“When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you, a tree, a house, a field or whatever. Merely think here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape.”
― Claude Monet

“For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding
atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.”
― Claude Monet

“There is a great difference between one idler and another idler. There is someone who is an idler out of laziness and lack of character, owing to the baseness of his nature. If you like, you may take me for one of those. Then there is the other kind of idler, the idler despite himself, who is inwardly consumed by a great longing for action who does nothing because his hands are tied, because he is, so to speak, imprisoned somewhere, because he lacks what he needs to be productive, because disastrous circumstances have brought him forcibly to this end. Such a one does not always know what he can do, but he nevertheless instinctively feels, I am good for something! My existence is not without reason! I know that I could be a quite a different person! How can I be of use, how can I be of service? There is something inside me, but what can it be? He is quite another idler. If you like you may take me for one of those.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

“It is not only by one's impulses that one achieves greatness, but also by patiently filing away the steel wall that separates what one feels from what one is capable of doing.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“Always lines, never forms! But where do they find these lines in Nature? For my part I see only forms that are lit up and forms that are not. There is only light and shadow.”
― Francisco Goya

“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

“Anyway, for whatever interest is to be derived therefrom. Bacon, Balthus, and Magritte are my three favourite painters, along with Dubuffet, of the whole post-impressionist period, by which I mean that before them Bonnard, Vuillard, & Seurat are my favourite painters of that time.”
― Edward Gorey, Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey & Peter F. Neumeyer

“From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them, and that is eternity.”
― Edvard Munch

“I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”
― Edvard Munch

“I felt as if there were invisible threads connecting us - I felt the invisible strands of her hair still winding around me - and thus as she disappeared completely beyond the sea - I still felt it, felt the pain where my heart was bleeding - because the threads could not be severed.”
― Edvard Munch

“My whole life has been spent walking by the side of a bottomless chasm, jumping from stone to stone. Sometimes I try to leave my narrow path and join the swirling mainstream of life, but I always find myself drawn inexorably back towards the chasm's edge, and there I shall walk until the day I finally fall into the abyss.”
― Edvard Munch

“Human fates are like planets

Like a star that emerges
from the dark –
and meets another star –
shines for a second before disappearing again
into the dark – [it is] in this way – in this way
a man and a woman meet – glide towards
one another are illuminated in love’s
flames – to then disappear
in their separate directions –
Only a few meet in a
single large blaze – where they both
can be fully united”
― Edvard Munch

“I painted the lines and colours that affected my inner eye. I painted from memory without adding anything, without the details that I no longer saw in front of me. This is the reason for the simplicity of the painting, their obvious emptiness. I painted the impressions of my childhood, the dull colours of a forgotten day.”
― Ulrich Bischoff, Edvard Munch: 1863-1944