W. D. Richter Quotes

I pursue no intentions, no directions; I have no program, no style and no mission.

I don't know what motivated the artist, which means that the paintings have an intrinsic quality. I think Goethe called it the 'essential dimension,' the thing that makes great works of art great.

If the abstract paintings show my reality, then the landscapes and still-lifes show my yearning.

Art is always to a large extent about need, despair and hopelessness.

Cage is much more disciplined. He made chance a method and used it in constructive ways; I never did that. Everything here is a little more chaotic.

Everything has a reason, including the selection of the photos, which was not arbitrary but appropriate to the period, its highs and lows and my sense of them.

Look at it this way: if winning wasn't so hard, it wouldn't feel so good.

Well, I refer to Celebrity Jeopardy as the short-bus Jeopardy, because it is a lot easier. Like, there was a whole column basically naming stores in New York.

One of the big tensions in my life is that I have known the stresses of financial hardship since I was a little kid, and it is the cancer for which I am seeking a cure.

I mean, I'll say the filthiest things in the world, but when it comes down to it, I'm kind of a prude.

I was born on 22 March 1931 in New York, the elder child of Abraham and Fanny Richter.

While a lab Director can get done the things that he regards as important, he has the more important job of bringing out the best ideas of the broader scientific community.

My main point today is that usually one gets what one expects, but very rarely in the way one expected it.

Remembrance is the only paradise out of which we cannot be driven away.

In every area of the world where there is earthquake risk, there are still many buildings of this type; it is very frustrating to try to get rid of them.

There is nothing more beautiful than cheerfulness in an old face, and among country people it is always a sign of a well-regulated life.

If the assumptions used in calculating energy are changed, then this seriously affects the final result, even though the same body of data might be used.

Lately there have been complaints that the use of the magnitude scale is confusing, or at least the reporting of magnitudes in the newspapers 'confuses the public.

To believe, one must have lost God. To paint, one must have lost art.

I am ridiculously old-fashioned.

I'm trying to paint a picture of what I have seen and what moved me, as well as I can. That's all.

I believe that art has a kind of rightness, as in music, when we hear whether or not a note is false

I don't mistrust reality, of which I know next to nothing. I mistrust the picture of reality conveyed to us by our senses, which is imperfect and circumscribed.

I never worked at painting as if it were a job; it was always out of interest or for fun, a desire to try something.

When I look back on the townscapes now, they do seem to me to recall certain images of the destruction of Dresden during the war.

I believe that he knew more what he was doing. I might be absolutely wrong about this, but that was my impression.

If I don't know what's coming - that is, if I have no hard-and-fast image, as I have with a photographic original - then arbitrary choice and chance play an important part.

What counts isn't being able to do a thing, it's seeing what it is. Seeing is the decisive act, and ultimately it places the maker and the viewer on the same level.

My landscapes are not only beautiful or nostalgic, with a Romantic or classical suggestion of lost Paradises, but above all 'untruthful'.

When we describe a process, or make out an invoice, or photograph a tree, we create models; without them we would know nothing of reality and would be animals.

Throwaway snapshots come closest to achieving the state of pure picture.

To make a photograph is already the first artificial act.

Art should be serious, not a joke. I dont like to laugh about art.

Painting pictures is simply the official, the daily work, the profession, and in the case of the watercolours I can sooner afford to follow my mood, my spirits.

I go to the studio every day, but I dont paint every day. I love playing with my architectural models. I love making plans. I could spend my life arranging things.

A variety of nothing is superior to a monotony of something.

I think the people that are best at something, they don't think about it much. That's the whole key to being good at anything.

Art is the ideal medium for making contact with the transcendental, or at least for getting close to it.

They are specific places I have discovered here and there when I am on the road to take photos. I go especially to take photos.

Well, I don't believe there are subjects that can't be painted, but there are a lot of things that I personally can't paint.

I remember what Ron Greschner said when he retired. 'The thing I'm going to miss most is showering with 23 guys.' And that's what it's all about: camaraderie.

Modern science is fast-moving, and no laboratory can exist for long with a program based on old facilities. Innovation and renewal are required to keep a laboratory on the frontiers of science.

Aside from accidentally by my kids, like wrestling around with my kids, no one has ever punched me in the face.

I've always tried to be nice to people, so that sort of translates into popularity, I guess.

I briefly considered doing Edgar Allan Poe and just swearing a lot.

No, I don't know any Emily Dickinson poems!

Anything that I read, I read because I'm interested in it.

If you start to just aim for what the audience wants to hear, you're already hamstrung because you don't have any freedom.

I don't how I can describe the quality that is only found in art (be it music, literature, painting, or whatever), this quality, it's just there, and it endures.

Some people are born with a brain that has this weird, magical mathematical thing that makes them an amazing jazz musician.