Antoni Tapies Quotes

It is not important to have said a thing first, or best - or even most interestingly. What is important is to say it on the right occasion.

Language cares.

We are all familiar with the dove carrying an olive branch as a peace offering. The jewelry I've created pays tribute both to the messenger's noble mission and gardens as a refuge of peace and tranquility.

The figure is still the only thing I have faith in in terms of how much emotion it's charged with and how much subject matter is there.

I see lines of space. I break things down into lines and space, and I balance.

All that passes is raised to the dignity of expression; all that happens is raised to the dignity of meaning. Everything is either symbol or parable.

Dance should mean something to you.

Words are mere shadows cast by ideas. But the ideas they represent are real.

The words that we use I think are symbolic of the values that we hold.

Language is very important to me.

Perhaps nothing is so fraught with significance as the human hand.

A word is no light matter. Words have with truth been called fossil poetry, each, that is, a symbol of a creative thought.

There is a great deal in a name. It often signifies much, and may involve a great principle.

An author should be delighted, not annoyed when he hears himself persistently misquoted. He could receive no higher compliment. It proves that the world has frequent and urgent need of his thoughts and will rather change the manner in which he expresses them than do without the things expressed.

Every single line means something.

Look who's calling the cauldron black." "Kettle. It’s a kettle. Get your metaphors right." "That wasn’t a metaphor. It was a, you know..." He stared off into space, blinking. "One of those things that’s symbolic of another thing. But isn’t the same thing. Just like it." "You mean a metaphor?" "No! It’s like a story...like...a proverb! That’s it." "I’m pretty sure that wasn’t a proverb. Maybe it was an analogy." "I don’t think so.

The point is, it didn’t really matter what the book was about. It was what it meant that was important.

Film relates to almost every other form of expression, but poetry is a bit abstract in its strength and sometimes even the white spaces on the page are evocative almost as much as where the text is. Certain poets have played with that.

Ek gret effect men write in place lite; Th'entente is al, and nat the lettres space.

The most obscene symbol in human history is the Cross; yet in its ugliness it remains the most eloquent testimony to human dignity.

TDF is more essential today than it was when it was first founded in 1968.

The cross is offensive because it directly confronts the evils which dominate so much of this world.

I don't know a whole lot about symbolism. There seems to me to be a potential danger in symbolism. I feel more comfortable with metaphors and similes.

The forward step must be made in silence. We detach ourselves from word forms - this can be accomplished by substituting for words, letters, concepts, verbal concepts, other modes of expressions: for example, color.

Small to greater matters must give way.