Evan DiLeo > Evan's Quotes

“Graphic design will save the world right after rock and roll does.”
― David Carson

“People who believe in politics are like people who believe in God: they are sucking wind through bent straws.”
― Charles Bukowski

“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“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

“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

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”
― Brian Eno, A Year With Swollen Appendices

“The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band”
― Brian Eno

“Well, I am a dilettante. It's only in England that dilettantism is considered a bad thing. In other countries it's called interdisciplinary research.”
― Brian Eno

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
― George Carlin

“I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I’ve lost.”
― Nan Goldin

“The artist is a collector of things imaginary or real. He accumulates things with the same enthusiasm that a little boy stuffs his pockets. The scrap heap and the museum are embraced with equal curiosity. He takes snapshots, makes notes and records impressions on tablecloths or newspapers, on backs of envelopes or matchbooks. Why one thing and not another is part of the mystery, but he is omnivorous.”
― Paul Rand, Paul Rand: A Designer's Art

“You will learn most things by looking, but reading gives understanding. Reading will make you free.”
― Paul Rand

“So that is the design process or the creative process. Start with a problem, forget the problem, the problem reveals itself or the solution reveals itself and then you reevaulate it. This is what you are doing all the time. ”
― Paul Rand

“Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.”
― Paul Rand

“Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions, there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that’s why it is so complicated.”
― Paul Rand

“All art is relationships, all art. Design is relationships. Design in a relationship between form and content... Your glasses are round. Your collar is diagonal. These are relationships. Your mouth is an oval. Your nose is a triangle - this is what design is.”
― Paul Rand

“Design is relationships. Design is a relationship between form and content.”
― Paul Rand

“To distort the letters of the alphabet in “the style of” Chinese calligraphy (sometimes referred to as chop suey lettering), because the subject happens to deal with the Orient is to create the typographic equivalent of a corny illustration. To mimic a woodcut style of type to “go with” a woodcut; to use bold type to “harmonize with” heavy machinery, etc., is cliché-thinking. The designer is unaware of the exciting possibilities inherent in the contrast of picture and type matter. Thus, instead of combining a woodcut with a “woodcut style” of type (Neuland), a happier choice would be a more classical design (Caslon, Bodoni, or Helvetica) to achieve the element of surprise and to accentuate by contrast the form and character of both text and picture.”
― Paul Rand, Thoughts on Design

“The designer is primarily confronted with three classes of material:
a) the given material: product, copy, slogan, logotype, format,
media, production process; b) the formal material: space, contrast,
proportion, harmony, rhythm, repetition, line, mass, shape, color,
weight, volume, value, texture; c) the psychological material: visual
perception and optical illusion problems, the spectators’ instincts,
intuitions, and emotions as well as the designer’s own needs.”
― Paul Rand, Thoughts on Design

“It is important to use
your hands, that is what distinguishes
you from a cow or a computer operator.”
― Paul Rand

“In essence, it is not what it looks like but what it does that defines a symbol.”
― Paul Rand, Thoughts on Design

“A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful.”
― Henri Matisse

“Yes. I'm not unhappy about becoming old. I'm not unhappy about what must be. It makes me cry only when I see my friends go before me and life is emptied. I don't believe in an afterlife, but I still fully expect to see my brother again. And it's like a dream life. I am reading a biography of Samuel Palmer, which is written by a woman in England. I can't remember her name. And it's sort of how I feel now, when he was just beginning to gain his strength as a creative man and beginning to see nature. But he believed in God, you see, and in heaven, and he believed in hell. Goodness gracious, that must have made life much easier. It's harder for us nonbelievers.
But, you know, there's something I'm finding out as I'm aging that I am in love with the world. And I look right now, as we speak together, out my window in my studio and I see my trees and my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds of years old, they're beautiful. And you see I can see how beautiful they are. I can take time to see how beautiful they are. It is a blessing to get old. It is a blessing to find the time to do the things, to read the books, to listen to the music. You know, I don't think I'm rationalizing anything. I really don't. This is all inevitable and I have no control over it.”
― Maurice Sendak

“We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”
― Stephen Fry