Martin Donovan Quotes

Probably all the books I've ever written have been efforts to define the boundaries of humanity.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

To work on great material, what you really end up working on is yourself, your own humanity.

Art's a very metaphysical activity. It's something that enriches the parameters of your life, the possibilities of being, and you touch transcendence and you change your life. And you want to change the life of others, too. That's why people are involved with art.

Acting, for me, is not an end in itself. It's more a means to asking the questions I'm obsessed with about life.

Every good story is about who we are and our struggle to define ourselves.

What's the point of art, of any art, if it doesn't let us see with a little bit of objectivity where we are?

It's really about the work - if you are doing it for the right reasons - really to illuminate the human condition.

The purpose of art is to accumulate the human within the human being.

The true artform is being a human being.

For me, poetry is the music of being human. And also a time machine by which we can travel to who we are and to who we will become.

Art is a luxury but also a necessity.

The arts and humanities teach us who we are and what we can be. They lie at the very core of the culture of which we're a part.

For me, writing is an experience. It's an exercise in which I want to discover myself by taking my characters to the edges of human experience, to the edges of themselves and then, asking certain questions - about love, what does it mean to love? What's beauty? What is true beauty? What does it mean to be insane - crazy?

The individual - man as a man, man as a brain, if you like - interests me more than what he makes because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves.

Many artists use their own lives as a kind of case study to examine what it's like to be human.

Certainly, I devote my energy to both telling my personal life story and seeking self- obliteration. However, I will not destroy myself through art.

What makes people the world over stand in line for Van Gogh is not that they will see beautiful pictures but that in an indefinable way they will come away feeling better human beings. And that is exactly what Van Gogh hoped for.

If art doesn't move people, then art has failed.

A movie that's about other horror movies isn't interesting. A movie about who we are, is.

Variety is more than a means of avoiding boredom, since art is more than an entertainment of the senses.

I want to explore more sides of humanity and myself. That's what acting is about.

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

Art is not an end in itself, but a means of addressing humanity.

I try to say something about the human condition whenever I can when I'm lucky.