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the arts

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

The arts Get yourself a different woman. Donald Trump's takeaway from Citizen Kane © 2023 Kwiple.com
The arts I'm telling you, Argentina – the mosh pit must have been 50,000 people. They just turn out, right? Now it's the Stones and Bob Dylan. This guy comes up to Nita, who's sitting on the end, at her first-ever concert, and he says to her, “Miss, make a contribution to fight HIV/AIDS, and then you get this gift.” And the gift was a pack of condoms. And she's like, “What? What?” “Never mind, just put it in your purse.” Of all people, 80,000 people in the place, they pick her to go give a pack of condoms to at her first concert ever.  Nancy Pelosi on a concert she and Nita Lowey attended in Argentina while on a security visit © 2019 Kwiple.com
The arts It's meaningless, lady, believe me — I painted it. Caption to Michael Crawford's cartoon depicting a man standing in front of a large abstract painting on a museum wall talking to a woman looking at it © 2016 Kwiple.com
The arts The play was a great success but the audience was a failure. Attributed to Oscar Wilde © 2024 Kwiple.com
The arts Said Hamlet to Ophelia, I'll draw a sketch of thee, What kind of pencil shall I use? 2B or not 2B? Spike Milligan, “A Silly Poem” © 2016 Kwiple.com
The arts Somehow, 96% of film critics loved Top Gun  like a Catholic priest loves sleepaway camp. Bill Maher, Real Time with Bill Maher, September 9, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
The arts Subsidies to poets would make for faster increases in human welfare than more billions for CERN or the space program. Dierdre Nansen McCloskey, Bettering Humanomics  © 2021 Kwiple.com
The arts There are only two things of any importance in the arts: one is a dead client and the other is a dead artist. Peter Wilson, former chairman of Sotheby's © 2017 Kwiple.com
The arts To make words sing Is a wonderful thing — Because in a song Words last so long. “To Make Words Sing” by Langston Hughes © 2017 Kwiple.com
The arts Want to take better pictures? Aim at better stuff. Ralph Lee Hopkins, Director of Expedition Photography, Lindblad Expeditons and National Geographic © 2018 Kwiple.com
The arts When art is made new, we are made new with it. John Russell, The Meaning of Modern Art,  Vol. 1 © 2023 Kwiple.com
The arts When success happens to an English writer, he acquires a new typewriter. When success happens to an American writer, he acquires a new life.  Martin Amis © 2018 Kwiple.com
The arts You've handed in a fish, a thrashing, living fish, and you've been given back a fishbone. Edward St Aubyn, quoted in Financial Times, October 21/22, 2017, comparing his Patrick Melrose novels to the screenplay for a television adaptation © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Factor by which the U.S. budget for military bands exceeds the budget  for the National Endowment of the Arts: 3 Harper's Index, October 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Number of statues in New York City's Central Park that depict women: 19 Percentage of those statues that depict fictional women: 100 Harper's Index, January 2017 © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Ratio of the number of statues of African Americans to those of Confederates in the U.S. Capitol: 4:11 Harper's Index, November 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Cities Because cities are so exciting, their inhabitants do not have to be. Their ease of access to culture saps any will on their part to make it themselves. But more than that, even if they do create, they are too close to the action to seriously question it. … It is by viewing the culture from its margins that one spots how it might take a new course. In other words, boredom and isolation have their uses. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, July 12, 2019, on the large number of creative talents who come from outside large cities © 2019 Kwiple.com
Cocks of the walk Lowest rated Oscars in HISTORY. Problem is, we don't have Stars anymore - except your President (just kidding, of course)! Donald Trump. 5:25 AM - 6 Mar 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Families Someone once compared the Trumps to the Borgias. But at least the Borgias supported the arts. Mary Trump, Financial Times, August 7, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Freedom of expression In the face of the history of the human race what can be more silly or ridiculous than likes or dislikes founded upon race or religion? Does humanity want symphonies and paintings and profound scientific truth, or does it want Christian symphonies, Christian paintings, Christian science, or Jewish symphonies, Jewish paintings, Jewish science, or Mohammedan or Egyptian or German or Russian or Commmunist or Conservative contributions to and expressions of the infinite richness of the human soul? Abraham Flexner © 2017 Kwiple.com
Gun control activists say I want to live in a world where guns are harder to get than Hamilton tickets!! Placard, New York City, March For Our Lives rally, March 24, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Immortality The death of the poet was kept from his poems. W. H. Auden, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” (. Jan. 1939)  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Knowledge Nobody knows anything. William Goldman, on the impossibility of predicting whether a movie will be a commercial success © 2024 Kwiple.com
Making money the old-fashioned way Being an editorial cartoonist © 2017 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Being a lap dancer © 2023 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Photographing others' photographs and selling them as new artistic works © 2019 Kwiple.com
Politics  You don't raise the kind of looming statues [of white supremacists] I saw at the State House [of South Carolina] just for the hell of it. Politics is the art of the possible, but art creates the possible of politics. Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message © 2024 Kwiple.com
Presidency We weren't going to know whether you could bring down a presidency with iambic pentameter until somebody tried it. Calvin Trillin, A Heckuva Job:  More of the Bush Administration in Rhyme  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say It certainly will be if you are still around. Oscar Levant responding to George Gershwin, who said, “I wonder if my music will be played a hundred years from now” © 2023 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say Take up less space. T. S. Eliot, responding to a questionnaire sent to many poets in 1922 that asked, “What in modern life is the particular function of poetry as distinguished from other kinds of literature?” © 2022 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say What the fuck is an homage? Jack Warner responding to Warren Beatty,  who told Warner that Bonnie and Clyde  was an homage to Warner's 1930s gangster films after Warner had asked him, at a screening, “What the fuck is this?” © 2021 Kwiple.com
Selfie My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a producer. Cole Porter © 2019 Kwiple.com
Selfie I paint with my prick. Pierre-Auguste Renoir © 2016 Kwiple.com
Selfie I am so rich that I must give myself away. Egon Schiele, referring to his self-portraits © 2018 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Entertainers can run government better than politicians © 2018 Kwiple.com
Snapshot His aim was the emancipation of the arts, the sublime at a reasonable price. Jacques Arnoux portrayed by Gustave Flaubert in A Sentimental Education Trans. by Robert Baldick © 2016 Kwiple.com
Snapshot The range of emotion Brown displayed on the screen was no wider than a mail slot. Jim Brown portrayed by James Wolcott © 2019 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Ed Stone could draw anything except a sober breath. Edward Durrell Stone portrayed by a fellow architecture student at Harvard © 2020 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Trump will operate as a kind of Ku Klux Kardashian, combining hard-right pubilism with the best of postmodern vaudeville. Donald Trump portrayed by Edward Luce © 2017 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Something is happening here But you don't know what it is Do you, Mister Jones? Said Mister Smith while watching a Bollywood film [from Bob Dylan's “Ballad of a Thin Man”] © 2016 Kwiple.com
z Surely you jest While art collections have long graced great rooms and hallways, some luxury homeowners display cherished pieces in bathrooms. Art lovers say they like the jewel-box effect when vibrant art is featured in small spaces. Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2016, on the best place for a $110,000 Damien Hirst depiction of a diamond-encrusted skull, according to its owners © 2016 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Yes, but you won't like any of them. Ticket-taker at a concert, when asked, “Are many people inside?” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality I don't know why They're so hard on me and you? We don't do nothing in the jook joints Rich folks don't do. But the rich folks have clubs And licenses and such. Only trouble is, we Can't afford that much. “Puzzlement” by Langston Hughes © 2017 Kwiple.com
 
Wretched excess While being sued by unpaid interns, billionaires Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen start marketing $55,000 backpacks made from Nile crocodile hides, onto which Damien Hirst, the world's wealthiest artist, has glued multicolored prescription pills, as only he can © 2015 Kwiple.com