Quotes About Artistry

Herman Melville said that artists have to take a dive, and either you hit your head on a rock and it splits your skull and you die, or, that blow to your head is so inspiring that you come back up and you do the best work you ever did. But — you have to take the dive. And you do not know what the result will be.

Crear es algo muy diferente que construir. La diferencia es preciosamente obvia. Construir algo compromete solamente las manos. Mientras que crear algo compromete el corazón y el alma.

All aspiring writers say these things: I will not compromise and write a best seller!—as if they could! There may be a few totally faked-up books that sell, but on the whole I believe every writer writes as well as he can.

Schubert Impromptus that Louise Bogan gave me—Opus 90 and Opus 142, Gieseking.

What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks 'the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,'.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come.

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

You can't use up creativity. The more you use the more you have.

It may be enough, however, to have it said that we survive in exact relationship to the dedication of our poets (include preachers, musicians, and blues singers).

You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

You've got to show them that by expressing themselves creatively through singing, songwriting, and performing, they can be whoever they want to be . . . not someone who takes off her clothes on top of a pool table for beer, not someone who can be bought and sold, not some sexual object for a man's desire, but a strong, tough businesswoman and artist.

I'm not sure I'll ever be finished. No matter how much I write, there will always be something I should've said.

Soltanto le costruzioni piccole possono essere portate a compimento dal loro primo architetto; le grandiose, le vere, lasciano sempre la pietra della cimasa alla posterità. Dio mi guardi dal completare alcunché. Questo intero libro non è che un abbozzo… anzi, non è che l'abbozzo di un abbozzo.

Thereon were seated in a hundred decorative attitudes, or stood immobile like carvings, or walked superbly across their sapphire setting, interweaving with each other like a living arabesque, a swarm of snowwhite cats.

Every writer must bring three major factors to each story that he writes. They are ideas, artistry and craftsmanship.

These word-stringers make nothing, grow nothing, kill no enemies, catch no fish and raise no cattle. They just take silver in exchange for words, which are free anyway. It is a clever trick, but in truth they are about as much use as priests.

INTERVIEWER: What specific piece of advice would you give to young writers? MALAMUD: Write your heart out.

My style flows from the fingers. The eye and ear approve or amend.

Your writing is never as good as you hoped; but never as bad as you feared.

Without the potter, clay is just dirt.

It's hard to get people at a record company to talk about music. They don't seem to want to talk about music, it's all marketing, and that's part of a record, you gotta get it out there, people have gotta hear it, but you could do it in a way that's not repulsive.

I did get a reputation for being choosy and not very easy to be approached, and none of that is true. It is not that I am not approachable, it is just that I am trying to find myself and establish who I am as an artist.

I don't want my reputation to take me over, I just want to be judged on my songs. I want people to come and see me because they want to, not because fashion dictates it.

I am in a business that's built on record sales and reputation and how your single is doing and where your song is on iTunes. But the kind of music that I do comes from my beliefs.

The filmmaker is really important to me: it could be their first film; it's not just about their reputation, but I have to really believe in them.