Quotes About Artistry

The secret voices of the brain need not always speak in thunder; the Dream-Painter within us need not always have a full canvas for the exercise of his craft.

You do not write a novel for praise, or thinking of your audience. You write for yourself; you work out between you and your pen the things that intrigue you

Successful creative energy involves the harnessing of controlled madness. I am convinced of this. —ERASMUS, The Mutability of Organic Forms

If you wanna be a writer, you must learn to paint a picture with words.

Everything is designed. Few things are designed well.

But, really, why does anyone create? You feel a...restlessness inside, a need to make something new, something no one has ever seen before. You want to add to the beauty and the richness of the world with a gift, an offering that is uniquely yours. It's an act of selfishness and generosity, all rolled into one.

You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. As quoted in Conversations with Maya Angelou (1989)

The trouble is that I am being bullied and intimidated by my own success and the fame that surrounds it and what people expect of me and their demands on me. They are forcing me out of my natural position as an artist so that I am in peril of ceasing to be an artist at all. When that happens I will be nothing because I cannot be a professional writer.

I once caught him in the act of revising a short story that had just been published. "Why," I asked, "rewrite what's already in print?" He looked at me, vaguely; then said, "Well, obviously it's not finished.

Give the world half of what Nina Simone gave it, and you have lived an exceptional life.

Because I need it to be mine alone while I carve it. I need solitude with it as I shape it. When I'm finished, then the world can have it, but when I work on it, it is to be my vision and mine alone. I wish no one to see it before it is finished.

Standing there, chisel and mallet in hand, gazing at the statue that was his vision in stone, was a moment when Richard could savor the supreme achievement of having his creation exist exactly as he had originally conceived it. For this singular moment in time, it was complete, and it was his alone.

Baraccus had told her that while a number of wizards could make things, the same as the ungifted could make things, it was this component of artistic ability in creating new things that took to to another level and made the makers more than true prophets. Magda remembered the passion in his voice as he told her about such things. Making things was in his soul. Creating new things seemed to be his spark of life.

That's a maker," Isidore said. "That's the way they are. Creativity in large and small ways defines their nature in everything they do.

First draft: let it run. Turn all the knobs up to 11. Second draft: hell. Cut it down and cut it into shape. Third draft: comb its nose and blow its hair. I usually find that most of the book will have handed itself to me on that first draft.

DEAFNESS DOESN'T PREVENT COMPOSERS HEARING THE MUSIC. IT PREVENTS THEM HEARING THE DISTRACTIONS.

This man was so absent-mindedly clever that he could paint pictures that didn't just follow you around the room but went home with you and did the washing-up.

Her technique was not perfect. Here and there he heard an off-pitch note, and her run of sixteenths was uneven. But her attack was fierce, her bow digging into the strings with such confidence that even her mistakes sounded intentional, every note played without apology.

While they could appreciate the artistry of the dancers and musicians, they were not carried away by the pleasures they offered. They had their own dreams—to find answers concerning the spiritual quest and the renewal of society.

Behind every work of art lies an uncommitted crime

Such a statement may well represent Sturgeon's own key to working. But there is no necessity for it to be my key into the work.

What are we to do with Sturgeon's frequently quoted assertion, "All my work is about love"? Well, I take the assertion seriously—but in the manner that I take seriously the innumerable strategies devised over the centuries by innumerable artists to reach into the centers of their own creativity. Such a statement may well represent Sturgeon's own key to working. But there is no necessity for it to be my key into the work.

The people who wrote down the Bible and the people who wrote down the Mahayana sutras were artists. They used images to express their insights.

The first set of lyrics for the first songs I ever wrote, which are the ones on 'Pretty Hate Machine,' came from private journal entries that I realized I was writing in lyric form.