Quotes About Inspiration

I like living, breathing better than working...my art is that of living. Each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral, it's a sort of constant euphoria.

The individual, man as a man, man as a brain, if you like, interests me more than what he makes, because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves.

The most interesting thing about artists is how they live

While all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.

L'art est justifié dans la mesure où il ajoute à la vie juste ce qui lui manque pour être plus vraie qu'elle-même.

Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which would otherwise have remained unknown to us like the landscapes of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists.

All the great things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they and only they who have founded religions and created great works of art.

What artists call posterity is the posterity of the work of art.

Everything great that we know has come from neurotics never will the world be aware of how much it owes to them, nor above all what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.

Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life.

Everything great in the world is done by neurotics; they alone founded our religions and created our masterpieces.

Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us still each one its special radiance.

If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two.

These dreams reminded me that, since I wished some day to become a writer, it was high time to decide what sort of books I was going to write. But as soon as I asked myself the question, and tried to discover some subject to which I could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock, my consciousness would be faced with a blank, I would feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent or perhaps that some malady of the brain was hindering its development.

The inertia of the mind urges it to slide down the easy slope of imagination, rather than to climb the steep slope of introspection.

I have every useless thing in the world in my house there. The only thing wanting is the necessary thing, a great patch of open sky like this. Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life, little boy," he added, turning to me. "You have a soul in you of rare quality, an artist's nature; never let it starve for lack of what it needs.

one might almost say that works of literature are like artesian wells, the deeper the suffering, the higher they rise.)

a writer's works, like the water in an artesian well, mount to a height which is in proportion to the depth to which suffering has penetrated his soul.

Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue. May you always see a blue sky overhead, my young friend; and then, even when the time comes, which is coming now for me, when the woods are all black, when night is fast falling, you will be able to console yourself, as I am doing, by looking up to the sky.

Each artist seems thus to be the native of an unknown country, which he himself has forgotten, different from that from which will emerge, making for the earth, another great artist.

My mother had to abandon her quest, but managed to extract from the restriction itself a further delicate thought, like good poets whom the tyranny of rhyme forces into the discovery of their finest lines.

Knowledge of the thing cannot impede it; but at least we have the things we discover, if not in our hands, at least in thought, and there they are at your disposal, which inspires us to the illusory hope of enjoying a kind of dominion over them.

A w ko?cu, je?li chwile wytchnienia lub dystrakcji towarzyskich oka?? mi si? konieczne, czu?em, ?e bardziej od rozmów intelektualnych, które ludzie ?wiatowi uwa?aj? za po?yteczne dla pisarza, mi?ostki z zakwitaj?cymi dziewcz?tami b?d? moim pokarmem wybranym, któremu ostatecznie dam przyst?p do mojej wyobra?ni, przypominaj?cej owego s?ynnego konia karmionego tylko ró?ami.

A well-read man will yawn with boredom when one speaks to him of a new "good book," as he imagines a sort of composite of all the good books he has read, whereas a good book is something special, unforeseeable, made up not of the sum of all previous masterpieces but of something which the most thorough assimilation of every one of them would not enable him to discover, since it exists not in their sum but beyond it.