Whistler Quotes

• As for borrowing Mr. Whistler's ideas about art, the only thoroughly original ideas I have heard him express have had reference to his own superiority as a painter over painters greater than himself.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Ideas, Entertainment

  Quoted in Truth, Jan. 1890

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• The less I behave like Whistler's mother the night before, the more I look like her the morning after.

  Tallulah Bankhead

  Mother, Morning, Night

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• There were a lot of artists in St. Ives. In fact, since the time of Whistler, St. Ives has been noted as an artist colony.

  Warren MacKenzie

  Artist, Facts, Colony

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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• Canned reference is practically always loaded with problems. Photos, for example, contrive to kill imagination and stifle the natural development of creative patterns. While "ready-mades" do show up from time to time, they are rare. Art need not be what is seen-but what is to be seen. "Nature," said James McNeill Whistler, "is usually wrong."

  Robert Genn

  Art, Imagination, Creative

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• For at least twenty minutes she handed out the story. The youngest kids were soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the scene. Liesel did not. The book thief saw only the mechanics of the words--their bodies stranded on the paper, beaten down for her to walk on. Somewhere, too, in the gaps between a period and the next capital letter, there was also Max. She remembered reading to him when he was sick. It he in the basement? she wondered. Or is he stealing a glimpse of the sky again?

  Markus Zusak

  Running, Book, Reading

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• A story is told that Whistler once painted a tiny picture of a spray of roses. The artistry involved in the picture was magnificent. Never before, it seemed, had the art of man been able to execute quite so deftly a reproduction of the art of nature.

  Sterling W Sill

  Art, Men, Rose

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• I do not approve of museums trying just to get people to come in. Whistler was very, very clear on this.

  Vivienne Westwood

  Museums, People, Trying

  "All hail the Queen". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. May 12, 2007.

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• I would say a must-do in Canada would be to go skiing at Whistler in Vancouver. You could take a chair lift for like a half hour to the top of this mountain and you ski down, it takes like so long to get to the bottom. You go past the clouds. It's absolutely incredible.

  Sebastian Bach

  Past, Clouds, Long

  "Ex-Skid Row Frontman Sebastian Bach on What's Cool in Canada". Interview with Avinash Ramsadeen, www.foxnews.com. October 12, 2011.

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• But there was escape, too, even in those days, for there was Whistler living in the grey mists with a faded orange moon. The nocturne transformed itself into dreamy rooms with Chopin's music creating a mood that softened the hard core of self.

  Mark Tobey

  Moon, Self, Creating

  "Reminiscence and Reverie" by Mark Tobey, Magazine of Art, 44, pp. 228, 231, October 1951.

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• A student of James McNeill Whistler tells the great artist, 'I tend to paint what I see.' Whistler replies, 'Ah! The shock will come when you see what you paint!

  James Whistler

  Artist, Students, Paint

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• Frederic Leighton to James McNeill Whistler: 'My dear Whistler, you leave your pictures in such a sketchy, unfinished state. Why don't you ever finish them?' James McNeill Whistler to Frederic Leighton: 'My dear Leighton, why do you ever begin yours?

  James Whistler

  States, Unfinished, Dear

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• Nobody likes a whistler, particularly not the divinity that shapes our ends.

  Douglas Adams

  Shapes, Divinity, Likes

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.662, Pan Macmillan

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• But, I understand that Black Comb and Whistler are supposed to be great for snowboarding. So I am looking forward to going there someday soon.

  Bridget Hall

  Snowboarding, Black, Looking Forward

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• There I was, an 18-year-old mimic rooming with a blind whistler.

  Art Carney

  Years, Blind, Blindness

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• There is no you in NewVillager, but there is a we. Your job thenceforth will be that of the bodhisattva, the guru, the gap-toothed docent with a serious thing for Whistler's Mother. There will be others, newervillagers than yourself, who never stood a chance either. Only through them do you stand any hope of tracing your footsteps back to where you began.

  Daniel Levin Becker

  Mother, Jobs, Serious Things

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• I don't know about bores. Maybe you shouldn't feel too sorry if you see some swell girl getting married to them. They don't hurt anybody most of them, and maybe they're all terrific whistlers or something. Who the hell knows? Not me.

  J. D. Salinger

  Girl, Hurt, Sorry

  J. D. SALINGER (1951). “THE CATCHER IN THE RYE”

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• Whistler,' Manet called. 'How's your mother?

  Christopher Moore

  Mother

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• Skiing in Whistler was great fun. It's an extreme environment that's very different to my own and I had never skied before, so I had to learn to take on the elements quite bravely. It was nice to try something new.

  Hayley Atwell

  Fun, Nice, Trying

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