Quotes About Artistry

We aren't contractually tied down to rationality! There is no sanity clause!

Anyone who conceives of writing as an agreeable stroll towards a middle-class life-style will never write anything but crap.

If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.

Para atender mejor el oficio del verso/arrodíllate

The music I want to hear in my head sounds somewhere between Jimi Hendrix and Massive Attack. It's not really like my dad, but there will always be similarities because we have the same vocal cords, and I learnt the guitar the way he taught me.

It was a relief to be able to do my own band, because I was very responsible for all this amazing music I didn't want to mess up before.

We must always remember that we are only midwives—if we want praise for progeny we must give birth to our own.

So much of what we do as artists is a combination of personal experience and imagination, and how that all creeps into your work is not so linear.

Tolkien worked like a painter who first pencils in a rough sketch, erases, then draws again, then fills in a more detailed drawing, then adds layers of color, working from background to foreground to final details.

I majored in fashion design in school, and I have always wanted to design my own line of clothing, jewelry, and stuff like that so this was just a step for me in that direction.

I look forward to the future - and going into the studio to make new music.

Poetry uses the hub of a torque converter for a jello mold.

the process of revising a poem is no arbitrary tinkering, but a continued honing of the self at the deepest level. —Jane Hirshfield

I failed to fulfill what should have been an interesting role. I couldn't take their formula and bring what I had, my humor, my ideas, and make it my own.

It's show business. No show, no business.

Would you believe I devise my entire show based upon a single one of these jewels? It's true I choose a color from my collection (...) and with it I can imagine a whole world.

on Prokofiev] And, by the way, he never did learn how to orchestrate properly.

A fresh approach to a work of music (...) usually comes to those who have a fresh approach to aspects of life, to life in general.

Stravinsky is one of the greatest composers of our time and I truly love many of his works. (...) The marvellous composer has invariably been at the centre of my attention, and I not only studied and listened to his music, but I played it and made my own transcriptions as well.

Prokofiev and I never did become friends, probably because Prokofiev was not inclined towards friendly relations in general. He was a hard man and didn't seem interested in anything than himself and his music.

I do write quickly, that's true, but I think about my music for a comparatively long time, and until it's complete in my head I don't begin setting it down.

I hate Toscanini. I've never heard him in a concert hall, but I've heard enough of his recordings. What he does to music is terrible in my opinion. He chops it up into a hash and then pours a disgusting sauce over it. Toscanin 'honoured' me by conducting my symphonies. I heard those recordings, too, and they're worthless.

I don't renounce my interest in gypsy songs. I don't see anything shameful in it, as opposed to, say, Prokofiev, who pretended to be enraged when he heard such music. He probably had a better musical education than I did. But at least I'm not a snob.

Glazunov was the first to convince me that a composer must make the performers submit to his will, and not the other way around (...) The composer must orchestrate in the way he conceived his work, and not simplify his orchestration to please the performers.