Xuan Phan > Xuan's Quotes

“Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.”
― Pablo Picasso

“As soon as we are alone,...inner chaos opens up in us. This chaos can be so disturbing and so confusing that we can hardly wait to get busy again. Entering a private room and shutting the door, therefore, does not mean that we immediatel;y shut ou all our iner doubts, anxieities, fears, bad memories, unresolved conflicts, angry feelings and impulsive desires. On the contrary, when we have removed our outer distraction, we often find that our inner distraction manifest themselves to us in full force. We often use the outer distractions to shield ourselves from the interior noises. This makes the discipline of solitude all the more important.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Making All Things New and Other Classics

“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

“White can be attained by blending all the colors of the spectrum together, or through the substraction of ink and all other pigments. In short, it is "all colors" and "no color" at the same time.”
― Kenya Hara, White

“Because nonbeing longs for being, on occasion it creates a stronger sense of being than being itself.”
― Kenya Hara, White

“Good design is innovative. Good design must be useful. Good design is aesthetic design. Good design makes a product understandable. Good design is honest. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design is long-lasting. Good design is consistent in every detail. Good design is environmentally friendly. And last but not least, good design is as little design as possible.”
― Dieter Rams

“Want to know how to make yourself instantly unhappy? Compare yourself with someone else.”
― Fumio Sasaki, Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism

“There should be no separation between spontaneous work with an emotional tone and work directed by the intellect. Both are supplementary to each other and must be regarded as intimately connected. Discipline and freedom are thus to be seen as elements of equal weight, each partaking of the other.”
― Armin Hofmann

“I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies.”
― Le Corbusier

“To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern—and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

“Like the soil, mind is fertilized while it lies fallow, until a new burst of bloom ensues.”
― John Dewey, Art as Experience

“Every art communicates because it expresses. It enables us to share vividly and deeply in meanings… For communication is not announcing things… Communication is the process of creating participation, of making common what had been isolated and singular… the conveyance of meaning gives body and definiteness to the experience of the one who utters as well as to that of those who listen.”
― John Dewey, Art as Experience

“Even if it is true that the average man seems most comfortable with the commonplace and familiar, it is equally true that catering to bad taste, which we so readily attribute to the average reader, merely perpetuates that mediocrity and denies the reader one of the most easily accessible means for esthetic development and eventual enjoyment.”
― Paul Rand, Thoughts on Design

“My Dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it's much better to be killed by a lover.
-Falsely yours”
― Charles Bukowski

“Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved , rather than that of loving , of one's capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable. In pursuit of this aim they follow several paths. One, which is especially used by men, is to be successful, to be as powerful and rich as the social margin of one's position permits. Another, used especially by women, is to make oneself attractive, by cultivating one's body, dress, etc. .... Many of the ways to make oneself lovable are the same as those used to make oneself successful, to 'win friends and influence people'. As a matter of fact, what most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

“People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love—or to be loved by—is difficult.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

“Love, experienced thus, is a constant challenge; it is not a resting place, but moving, growing, working together; even when there is harmony or conflict, joy or sadness, is secondary to the fundamental fact that two people experience themselves, rather than by fleeing from themselves. There is only one proof for the presence of love: the depth of the relationship, and the aliveness and strength in each person concerned; this is the fruit by which love is recognized.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving