Quotes About Artistry

Any man's death diminishes us, but when an artist passes away, we lose not just an island but an entire archipelago.

The composer Stravinsky had written a new piece with a difficult violin passage. After it had been in rehearsal for several weeks, the solo violinist came to Stravinsky and said he was sorry, he had tried his best, the passage was too difficult, no violinist could play it. Stravinsky said, "I understand that. What I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it." —Thomas Powers

What we're doing is an aesthetic pursuit. It involves craftsmanship as well as mathematics and it involves people skills and prose skills—all of these things that we don't necessarily think of as engineering but without which I don't think you'll ever be a really good engineer.

Emperor Joseph II: My dear young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect. Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?

The big thing that everyone forgets, you're famous and on TV and everything, but I think there's something very rewarding to be able to write a song, record it, and have it turn out as you heard it in your head, or even better.

not being able to read music is absolutely liberating for me. It gives me a wider musical vocabulary. There

In those days, it didn't take much imagination to come up with something that required great lyric development skills. You just thought of an experience that you might have gone through, and write it down.

an authentic personal style cannot be achieved without a solid technique at its base.

As a Juilliard student I would write music by day and by night hear John Coltrane at the Village Vanguard, Miles Davis and Art Blakey at the Café Bohemia, or Thelonious Monk trading sets with the young Ornette Coleman, who was just up from Louisiana playing his white plastic saxophone at the Five Spot at St. Marks Place and the Bowery. Years later, I got to know Ornette.

If the opening chapters of Genesis portray God as a creative artist, then it only stands to reason that the people he made in his image will also be artists. Art is an imaginative activity, and in the act of creating, we reflect the mind of our Maker.

Why does God call people to be artists? Because he is an Artist, and we are made in his image. When we first meet the God of the Bible, he is busy making things and calling them good. Thus it is only natural for him to take some of the people that he has made, call them to be artists, and hold them to an aesthetic standard.

Artists are called and gifted-personally, by name-to write, paint, sing, play, and dance to the glory of God.

Painting and sculpture are very archaic forms. It's the only thing left in our industrial society where an individual alone can make something with not just his own hands, but brains, imagination, heart maybe.

Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.

I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.

Yoko Ono, quite simply, did things that John Lennon did not dare.

"Fool!" said my muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."

Nothing sets you (or at least me) free creatively," says the untamed film director and Monty Pythonite, Terry Gilliam, "like having a set of limitations to explore.

I feel that I don't know anything, I don't know how to act, but I can surrender myself to a director I respect and love. I feel very lucky to be a part of their visions.

Obviously, Gaga's one of the greatest music visionaries of our time, and Beyonce is one of the greatest visions of our time. She is a music visionary, too.

Their spirits and their visions are embodied in their craft. And so is mine. It's not Jane Saw Puff. But the clarity of Jane Saw Puff is precious to me.

The first LP, 'Inner Mounting Flame,' is, of course, one of my favorites, and also 'Visions of the Emerald Beyond.' But the others are also very dear to me.

When you're an actor, you're a slave to other people's visions.

I would sing 'Visions of Love' over and over for a year straight.