Quotes About Artistry

The creation by word-power of something out of nothing--what is that but magic? And, may I add, what is that but literature?

It is not enough for the phrases to be good., what you make with them ought to be good too.

What the rest of us see only under the influence of mescalin, the artist is congenitally equipped to see all the time.

Da se napiše loša knjiga, treba isto toliko truda kao i da se napiše dobra.

In the human fugue there are eighteen hundred million parts. The resultant noise means something perhaps to the statistician, nothing to the artist. It is only by considering one or two parts at a time that the artist can understand anything.

I see her as a kind of Midas, turning everything she touched into imagination.

Le style c'est I'homme. No doubt. But the converse is also partly true. L'homme c'est le style. Because we have a gift for writing in a certain way, we find ourselves, in some sort, becoming our way of writing. We mould ourselves in the likeness of our particular brand of eloquence.

What the rest of us see only under the influence of mescaline, the artist is congenitally equipped to see all the time. His perception is not limited to what is biologically or socially useful. A little of the knowledge belonging to Mind at Large oozes past the reducing valve of brain and ego, into his consciousness.

Mert gondolj bele: a zongora. A billenty?k kezdÅ'dnek. A billenty?knek vége. Tudod jól, nyolcvannyolc van belÅ'lük, nem verhetnek át vele. Nem végtelenek. Te vagy végtelen, és ott, a billenty?k belsejében végtelen a zene, melyet megszólaltatsz. Azok nyolcvannyolcan vannak. Te végtelen vagy.

Certo... sai che musica però... con quelle mani, due, destre... se solo c'è un pianoforte...

He was a thread of gold running straight into the woof of a carpet woven by a madman.

By comparison with such lives, our days were inconsequential indeed, and yet even though our canvas was small, still we could paint a masterpiece—as long as we were content for it to be a miniature.

Love of what you do is unmistakable in the care with which you do it, whether it is seen in the way in which an artist applies the final touch of paint to his canvas, a master carpenter sands the last touch of roughness from the surface of the wood, or a woman making pasta kneads the compliant dough, draws it out, coaxes it to the right consistency.

But, it is well known, what strikes the capricious mind of the poet is not always what affects the mass of readers.

Creation is the miniature of creation

They don't know this stuff because (a) their time was better spent making music; (b) they weren't interested; (c) it sounded too complicated; and/or (d) learning it was too much like being in school.

Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.

I could play it safe by recording songs that are familiar, but am I expanding myself as an artist by doing covers? It's a catch-22. It's called show business: The word 'business' is in it, and you've got to be a businessman. But then again, you have to be true to yourself as an artist.

We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffering, not because of it.

Vulgarity begins when imagination succumbs to the explicit.

The English language has a deceptive air of simplicity so have some little frocks but they are both not the kind of thing you can run up in half an hour with a machine.

If someone decides to be a musician now, it means because there is no hope of money at the end of it, it means they really want to be a musician. And if someone is writing now, there is no hope for money at the end of it.

The process of creation is the exact opposite of making something out of nothing. It is, on the contrary, a filtering process that makes something out of everything.

There's a consistency in my work that pops up independent of the limitations of the technology.