Quotes About Artistry

To interrupt the writer from the line of thought is to wake the dreamer from the dream. The dreamer cannot enter that dream, precisely as it was unfolding, ever again.

The working, concentrating artist is an adult who refuses interruption from himself. Who remains absorbed and energized in and by the work - who is thus responsible to the work.

He lives nowhere but on the page, and in the attentive mind that leans above that page.

Neither is it possible to control, or regulate, the machinery of creativity.

I write on sheepskin and use goose quill pens," said Brother Michael. "My paints are made of earth and plants." "Wow," said Annie.

To be a truly great artist, you must learn to combine your observations with your imagination.

People think I am trying to keep my ideas a secret, said Leonardo. But, in truth, I am left-handed, and when I write normally from left to right, I smear ink across the page. One day I realized that if I wrote backward, I would not be so messy. (p. 62)

I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived. I

I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated.

Architecture is not a business, not a career, but a crusade and a consecration to a joy that justifies the existence of the earth.

Is it an inspiring sight to see a man commit a heroic gesture, and then learn that he goes to vaudeville shows for relaxation? Or see a man who's painted a magnificent canvas—and learn that he spends his time sleeping with every slut he meets?" "What do you want? Perfection?" "—or nothing. So, you see, I take the nothing.

Wynand asked: "Howard, have you ever been in love?" Roark turned to look straight at him and answer quietly: "I still am." "But when you walk through a building, what you feel is greater than that?" "Much greater, Gail.

Ultimately it was rap that got my head in the right place, two songs especially: Jay-Z's "My 1st Song" and Eminem's "Lose Yourself.

If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.

She is not a bulldog, only a woman pressed into the shape of a small jar, possibly attempting to dance in there. It shows in the way she places a seashell on a window sill, a red-painted chair in the corner: she is practiced in the art of creating a still life and taking up residence inside it.

There will never be another Frida.

In my first draft every sentence I put down is to advance the story. Each subsequent draft - the 3rd, the 7th, the 27th - is trying to turn each of those sentences into a poem.

One thing I learned from Mr. Armstrong while striving heartily to remain uneducated: a good story doesn't just copy life, it pushes back on it. It's why guys like Chartrain wear their clothes too big and their teeth edged with gold, why Mr. Dick puts words on kites and sends them to the sun. It's why I draw what I draw.

But when she got going, on numbers like "Pulse Fiction" and "Delancey Street Blues," she had that same air of having been possessed by the instrument, as though the piano was a demon and she its exhilarated amanuensis.

The player is always trapped in his own play but he must never allow the spectators to suspect this, they must always think that he is free. Thus the great art of the player is not in showing but in concealing.

When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and he opens ways for a better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it, shows there are still more pages possible.

The mason stirs. Words! Pens are too light. Take a chisel to write.

Writers were blessed stenographers taking divine dictation.

I am not the potter, nor the potter's wheel, but the potter's clay, does it depend on the value achieved intrinsic as much as the value of the clay as the wheel and master craftsmanship?