Quotes About Artistic

Art brings the unseen into the world. That's why I don't paint what I see, or things based on old paintings. I paint what I dream. I'm bringing the other world into this one.

I've never had a block. I'm talking within the limits of my abilities. But in my own small way, I've had an embarrassment of riches. I'll have five ideas and I'm dying to do them all. It takes weeks or months where I agonize and obsess over which to do next. I wish sometimes someone would choose for me. If someone said, Do idea number three next, that would be fine. But I have never had any sense of running dry.

The power of any art is limited

When I came overseas, I realized that there are many ideologies and many trends, and it's also very hard to produce honest art and honest literature. I decided that I didn't want to follow any of these ideologies or trends, because that's also a kind of pressure that doesn't allow absolute freedom. So I decided that I was only going to produce works that were satisfactory to me, and that meant not following any trends and being anti-ideological.

ROSCO: I haven't been happy with my part, Bunny. It's totally underwritten. Just listen to that last line, for instance! Who could do anything with "It's totally underwritten?" Where's the heart in a line like that? Where's the character?

When you're making something, you're in a different state. You go into a deep level of concentration, to the point where you're not self-conscious anymore, it's just flowing out of you.

The center of the artistic process—for me—is the attempt to transform a particular feeling, insight, sorrow into a metaphor and then make that metaphor ramify so it holds everything, everything in the world.

Art is the reflection of an imaginative mind.

Sometimes I see movies and I get almost angry - because I'm like, I can never make that movie. It stems from a jealousy, but from a good kind of jealousy. It's inspirational.

Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.

When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don't. I have a knack for disturbing.

A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.

L'art ne vient pas coucher dans les lits qu'on a faits pour lui ; il se sauve aussitôt qu'on prononce son nom »

When you live under the power of terror and segregation, you can't ever start a work of art.

It's the honest point of view of an artist: You have to please. I'd like viewers to come away from my films unsure whether they've understood them. I want to leave them wondering.

I'm not a particularly verbose person. I think that's why I like taking pictures... they speak for themselves.

Yeah, I've been interested in music since I was a teenager, always writing songs.

I really wanted to be a newspaper cartoonist, but nobody liked my work. I didn't have the control or flair that was necessary to create something that didn't look childish.

I like to believe most people's natural state is to be creative. It definitely was when we were kids, when being spontaneously and joyfully creative was just our default setting. As we grow we learn to evaluate and judge, to navigate the world with some discretion, and then we turn on ourselves. Creating can't just be for the sake of creating anymore. It has to be good, or it has to mean something. We get scared out of our wits by the possibility of someone rejecting our creation.

Allowing something you've created to be undermined to a point where you can no longer believe in it or stand behind it feels suicidal to me.

I was inspired by the marvelous example of Giacometti, the great sculptor. He always said that his dream was to do a bust so small that it could enter a matchbook, but so heavy that no one could lift it. That's what a good book should be.

For being able to use language was a critical skill that could carry one far. One could use it professionally, as a crafter of everything from political speeches to modern novels. One could use it personally, as a tool of discovery or a means of staying connected to others. One could use it as an outlet that would feed the artistic spirit of the creator, which existed in everyone.

In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real.

I've had to keep defining and defending myself as a writer every single day of my adult life -- constantly reminding and re-reminding my soul and the cosmos that I'm very serious about the business of creative living, and that I will never stop creating, no matter what the outcome, and no matter how deep my anxieties and insecurities may be.