Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

Every viewer is going to get a different thing. That's the thing about painting, photography, cinema.

I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it.

What a song is is a subjective thing. There's no one real definition for it.

If someone stands in front of one of my paintings and says, 'This is just a mess', the word 'just' is not so good, but 'mess' might be right. Why not a mess? If it makes you say, 'Wow, I've never seen anything like that', that's beautiful.

I'm not so presumptuous to feel that they're gonna get it right away, get exactly what I have in mind. I hope that they'll enjoy looking at it at any rate, whatever it is. And that's why I started writing stories on my work.

I'm an artist, and I like art that gets people talking, good or bad. Criticism is good, too.

One's roused by this, another finds that fit: Each loves the play for what he brings to it.

It is the heart that makes the critic, not the nose.

Much of appreciating art or music is really the interpretation of the listener. To a certain extent it's projection - it's what people need or lack in themselves that they then put upon these people that they admire.

My pictures are complex and so am I. When I am almost symbolistic in writing, there is a more limiting difference’s of accepting, while I can be even more complex in the photographs and people can usually accept them within the framework of their own limitations or lack of limitations – there is no dictionary meaning… they can look up for the photographic image and allow it to confuse them.

Different people, in good faith, can look at the same fact and interpret it differently. But that's where an interesting conversation begins.

The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.

It's entertaining to watch somebody break my music down or explain what he thinks I was thinking during the process of making these records. Because... he has no idea.

Art is interesting because there can be so many different perspectives in a piece of art. The way I see it may be completely different than the way somebody else sees it. It's interesting to hear what somebody sees in a piece of art compared to somebody else. It could be completely different, and that's interesting to me.

But I'm the only one who can paint the moon, because I'm the only one who knows whether that's right or not.

I never felt interpretation was my job.

There are websites of 'True Detective' artwork out there now, and it's beautiful. And I don't want to take that away from anybody. I know what it means to me. But I don't want to take away anyone's interpretation of the show.

All good art, to me, is uncertainty.

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

I try not to spend too much time interpreting my comics for people, because I try to put out there whatever I can, and people can draw whatever conclusions they want.

Art is very subjective and having to put numbers on it seems counterintuitive.

Meaning lies as much in the mind of the reader as in the Haiku.

Perceptions are portraits, not photographs, and their form reveals the artist’s hand every bit as much as it reflects the things portrayed

Seeing a play, listening to music - you'll always contextualize it in your own way. Whoever you are, wherever you are; I think that's really important.

In spite the mountains of books written about art, no precise definition of art has been constructed. And the reason for this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty.