The test of an abstract picture, for me, is not my first reaction to it, but how long I can stand it hanging on the wall of a room where I am living.

-Betjeman, SirJohn
  John Piper.

It has been often said, even by proponents of those picturesknown inaestheticslang as Cubist and Abstract, that they have no subject matter. Such a statement is equivalent to saying that life has no subject matter.

-Davis, Stuart
  'The Cube Root', in  Art News, vol.41,1 Feb.

Every form is individual, there exists none which is abstract.

-Heinse,Wilhelm
Quoted in  J  J  W Heinse Sa«  mmtliche Werke (1903^25).

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact or existence? No.Commit itthen tothe flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

-Hume, David
  An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section12, pt.3.

The force that propels the human spirit on the clear way forward and upward is the abstract spirit.

-Kandinsky,Wassily
  'On the Question of Form', in Blaue Reiter Almanac.

Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you.

-Pollock, (Paul) Jackson
Quoted in FrancisV O'Connor Jackson Pollock (1967).

Literature is not an abstract science, to which exact definitions can be applied.It is an Art rather, the success of which depends on personal persuasiveness, on the author's skill to give as on ours to receive.

-Quiller-Couch, SirArthurThomas known as  'Q'
  Inaugural lecture as Professor of English at Cambridge University.

For me, as for most novelists, every genuine imaginative event begins down there, with the facts, with the specific, and not with the philosophical, theideological, or the abstract.

-Roth, Philip Milton
  The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography,'Dear Zuckerman'.

The Pop artists did images that anybody walking down Broadway could recognize in a split secondöcomics, picnic tables, men's trousers, celebrities, shower curtains, refrigerators,Coke bottlesöall the great modern things that the Abstract Expressionists tried so hard not to notice at all.

-Warhol, Andy
Quoted in AndyWarhol and Pat Hackett POPism:TheWarhol'60s (1980).