Quotes About Artistry

I learned from my teachers but became through my music

Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby.

I was using them as teachers for technique but I was never trying to be a folk.

As a dancer, one of my many teachers along the way made the comment that who I was onstage and who I was off were two totally different people.

People shout out for songs and I don't even remember writing them.

Pixar is the most technically advanced creative company; Apple is the most creatively advanced technical company.

I have loved works of fiction precisely for their illusions, for the author's sleight-of-hand in showing me the magic, what appeared in the right hand but not in the left...

I often reread passages of Lolita for its exquisite language. To me, Lolita has no message, no purpose, other than to exist as a marvel of literary creation. It has wit, intelligence and style. It pointedly makes no attempt to serve a higher moral purpose, and previous attempts by critics to find one have proven ludicrous. The annotated edition is accompanied by a brilliant afterword by Nabokov that is a lucid reminder of the pure joy of writing, its interplay with life.

Her mastery of the language was a blissful expression of the spirit to her, like playing a musical instrument.

A big enough artist, I say, can eat anything, must eat everything and then alchemize it. Only the feeble writer is afraid of expansion.

The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.

Write immediately, yes! But as artist! Write with the task in mind—always trying to say the thing in the best way you can. The how! Not the what!

Anaïs Nin noted in her diary: "The same thing which makes Henry indestructible is what makes me indestructible: It is that at the core of us is a writer, not a human being.

This is my essential reason for writing, not for fame, not to be celebrated after death, but to heighten and create life all around me... I also write because when I am writing I reach the high moment of fusion sought by the mystics, the poets, the lovers, a sense of communion with the universe.

All creators are unhappy in life. All creators are absolutists.

Perhaps I have loved the artist because creation is the nearest we come to divinity.

Also, I entreat you: do not show your work in progress to any outsider. I mean Bradley or Kahane, or anyone who is not working with you, following your thought, entering into it. It is confusing. These men are not your co-workers or even friends. These men are outsiders. Keep to yourself. You need a deep cohesion, a strong forward continuity. Admit no opinions until you are through.

The Mystic of Sex" (an essay on D. H. Lawrence published pseudonymously in The Canadian Forum, in October 1930), and its offspring, the "Unprofessional Study" of D. H. Lawrence, published in 1932, reflect her own urgent needs to express her sexuality, to reorder the framework of her marriage, as much, perhaps, as they were a passionate defense (the first by a woman) of a much maligned fellow artist.

It doesn't matter whether one is for or against—the writing it is all that counts.

I turned away from life to work, to bring the work up to date. This is our time of peace, when one writes music.

The hours that go to the journal are an evasion, fundamentally, of the imminent, the ever-impending problem—that of mastering your medium, of becoming the artist you are.

You might as well expect of Brancusi that he give us his masterpieces in fried bread crumbs or apple sauce. Can't be done.

I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me. The world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign & re-create myself…

I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.