Some of my favorite quotations about art or by artists, in no particular order:

"There is a lot of uninspired work in the galleries. But there is so much ingenious work, so much intelligence, so much dedication, and really so much highmindedness in the art world that, were it shared by the rest of the world, we would have entered a golden age." - Arthur C. Danto

"If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint." - Edward Hopper

"If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread." - Barbara Kingsolver

"Art is what makes life more interesting than art." - Robert Filliou, Fluxus

"The work is untitled because meaning is always changing in time and place." - Felix Gonzalez-Torres

"Chardin has taught us that a pear is as much alive as a woman, an ordinary jug as beautiful as a precious stone." - Marcel Proust

"Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable." - George Bernard Shaw

"Art is not delivered like the morning paper; it has to be stolen from Mount Olympus." - Wayne Thiebaud

"You can't out-Van Gogh Van Gogh." - Scot Borofsky

"Support Living Artists." - BWAC

"Life beats down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you have one." - Stella Adler

"It's a very lonely occupation being a painter. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody . . . Being well-known or having lots of exhibitions has nothing to do with being an artist - those things are just chance." - Howard Hodgkin (1932-2017), from a 2016 interview in the Daily Telegraph (UK)

"Who doesn't want to go to pieces in the tropics?" - romance novelist Lorna Smith, in the 1939 movie "Honeymoon in Bali"

"However skillful an artist may be, and however perfect his technique, if he unhappily has nothing to tell us, his work is valueless." - Jacques Maritain