Art should simplify. That is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process; finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole.
Source: From an Internet collection of quotations.
-- Willa Cather, (Dec 7 1876-1947), US novelist, short-story writer; She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel One of Ours, 1922; she also wrote O Pioneers, 1913.