A Quote by Oscar Niemeyer

Surprise is key in all art.

Oscar Niemeyer

Quote Topics

Art Key Surprise

Quote Author

Oscar Niemeyer
Brazilian - Architect
December 15, 1907 - December 5, 2012

I've never had a surprise birthday party. I've had every other type of surprise. I've had surprise beatings, surprise drug tests, surprise daughter I think.

Dave Attell

Inspiration quite frequently arrives as a surprise. The key is being open to it.

Tori Amos

Humor is based on surprise, and surprise is a milder way of saying shock. It's surprise that makes the joke.

George Carlin

I once took the key off my girlfriend's key ring so that I could surprise her when she got home. So I did this whole romantic setup in our bedroom with flowers and rose petals. She was so mad when she got home, but then when she walked in, she was so surprised.

Trey Songz

The key here is that with planning, you can take advantage of opportunities, where without this planning, you may just watch them pass you by. Like knowing that a key potential customer may be at a conference and putting together a pitch just in case you run into them - or being caught by surprise with nothing coherent to say.

Bruce Pittman

At one point cinema and photography weren't treated as art. Now it's crazy to think they're not. The key question is "What is art today?" The most important artists of the last 20 years are Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive, because the influence they have had is incredible and they've changed the world. That is art.

Ferran Adria

In architecture it isn't enough to just have the right building that works well. It can also be beautiful. It can also be different. It can create surprise. And surprise is the main thing in a work of art. [] I like and respect Brasília very much. It is a simple city, a rational one. I always defend the urban design of Brasília

Oscar Niemeyer

I knew nothing about film at all. I suppose the biggest surprise is all these things. In the theatre we sort of do, I might do two or three key interviews and that would be it.

Andrew Lloyd Webber

Art must take reality by surprise.

Francoise Sagan

The modern world has far too little understanding of the art of keeping young. Its notion of progress has been to pile one thing on top of another, without caring if each thing was crushed in turn. People forgot that the human soul can enjoy a thing most when there is time to think about it and be thankful for it. And by crowding things together they lost the sense of surprise; and surprise is the secret of joy.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Long looking at paintings is equivalent to being dropped into a foreign city, where gradually, out of desire and despair, a few key words, then a little syntax make a clearing in the silence. Art... is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar... We have to recognize that the language of art, all art, is not our mother-tongue.

Jeanette Winterson

As President Obama is inaugurated for a second time, the biggest political surprise is that gun control is now key to his political legacy.

Juan Williams

The idea of surprise is part of what makes something funny, or what gets a reaction. At least when I'm an audience member, after you hear a joke so many times it's not as funny because it loses its surprise or its twist. So I think funny has to do with surprise.

Charlyne Yi

I don't think policy makers surprise unnecessarily. You don't pick surprise as a part of your policy. Markets value a certain amount of predictability. But there are certain areas where surprise is a tool.

Raghuram Rajan

Prayer adds an element of surprise to your life that is more fun than a surprise party or surprise gift or surprise romance. In fact, prayer turns life into a party, into a gift, into a romance.