An avant-garde man is like an enemy inside a city he is bent on destroying, against which he rebels; for like any system of government, an established form of expression is also a form of oppression. The avant-garde man is the opponent of an existing system. Eugene Ionesco
Avant-garde art jousts with propriety, but takes care never to unseat it. Mason Cooley
Life is difficult for those who have the daring to first set out on an unknown road. The avant-garde always has a bad time of it. Anton Chekhov
Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You’re glad someone’s done it but you don’t necessarily want to listen to it. Brian Eno
The idea of avant-garde art is a very suspicious thing to me, the idea that poetry is new and it keeps being new the way Chevrolets every year are new. Robert Morgan
Avant-gardism is an addiction that can be appeased only by a revolution in permanence. Harold Rosenberg