A Quote by Peter Beard

I made a life for myself in Africa that was as far as you could possibly get from art school at Yale. — © Peter Beard
I made a life for myself in Africa that was as far as you could possibly get from art school at Yale.
If you are cheating on the SATs so your son or daughter can get into Yale, what do you think it's going to be like for them when they show up to Yale, and they should be at a completely different school?
When I went to Yale, I thought it would be like in Stenford 24 hours a day. Robert Brustein, former dean of the Yale School of Drama and founder of the Yale Repertory Theater was there, and we did all this very serious - I would go so far as to say completely humorless - Eastern European drama, as well as August Strindberg, and Henrik Ibsen, we weren't allowed to do William Shakespeare or Tennessee Williams or Eugene O'Neill. I was not in the right place.
With Yale, my world got so big all of a sudden. At school, if you could dream it, someone would make it so that you could do it. It was magical. I had a lot going on, as you do when you're 17, and didn't necessarily capitalize on all of it, but it made me see possibility in a way that I hadn't before.
When I was in school, my mother stressed education. I am so glad she did. I graduated from Yale College and Yale University with my master's and I didn't do it by missing school.
The last thing I ever wanted to get involved with is Hollywood. The way it works is that people get an idea you could possibly do something, but there's a one-in-a-hundred chance that it could get made.
I was lucky enough to go to boarding school for my high school years, and I had all the resources that I possibly could needed - squash courts and every book you ever would have wanted, every art supply.
The art is more important than the artist. The work is more important than the person who does it. You must be prepared to sacrifice all the you could possibly have, be, or do; you must be willing to go all the way for your art. If it is a question between choosing between your life and a work of art -- any work of art -- your decision is made for you.
It is hard to think of any work of art of which one can say 'this saved the life of one Jew, one Vietnamese, one Cambodian'. Specific books, perhaps; but as far as one can tell, no paintings or sculptures. The difference between us and the artists of the 1920's is that they they thought such a work of art could be made. Perhaps it was a certain naivete that made them think so. But it is certainly our loss that we cannot.
You tell me one other person that graduated from Yale that is as inarticulate as Bush. Yale's a great school, and here's this idiot.
It took me a while to figure that out and to realize what a gift that I had been given. And when I finally did, I dedicated myself to be the best pitcher I possibly could be, for as long as I possibly could be.
I did not see any way that I could possibly give birth to someone else and also give birth to myself. Far from feeling guilty, it was the first time that I had taken responsibility for my own life.
My schooling was very conservative. I went to Trinity School, and then to the Hill School, which is a boarding school, then to Yale. My parents got divorced in that period, and I realized I didn't have a life anymore. I was the only child, so a three-person family breaks apart. I ended up very conformist, very scared, very lonely. I couldn't go on with Yale, just couldn't do it. I'd been doing too much of that for too long. I didn't know what I wanted, but I knew what I didn't want, which was to go to Wall Street and join the crowd there.
We need to make sure that there's art in the school. Why? Why should art be in the school? Because if art isn't in a school, then a guy like Steve Jobs doesn't get a chance to really express himself because in order for art to meet technology, you need art.
I wrote my first play, Uncommon Women and Others, in the hopes of seeing an all-female curtain call in the basement of the Yale School of Drama. A man in the audience stood up during a post show discussion and announced, “I can't get into this, it's all about girls.” I thought to myself, “Well, I've been getting in to Hamlet and Laurence of Arabia my whole life, so you better start trying.”
I have disciplined myself when I'm working. When I discovered art, I realized that one could keep that search going within creation. But I also realize that in order to create the art, you have to stay, you can't go too far.
I made a deadline for myself that if I wasn't earning a living being a musician by 'A Boy Named Goo,' I was going to get back to school, get a degree, and go on with my life - and enjoy the memories I had.
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