Quotes About Artistry

There is no measuring with time, not even a year matters, and ten years are nothing. To be an artist means: to neither reckon nor count; to ripen like the tree, which does not rush its sap, and stands firm in the storms of spring, without anxiety that summer may not come after. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there, as if eternity lay before them, so carelessly silent and vast. I learn it daily, learn it with pain, am grateful for it: Patience is all!

A work of art is good if it has grown out of necessity.

There is here no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer.

A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity.

Don't write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance.

A piece of art is good if it is born of necessity. This, its source, is its criterion; there is no other.

To be an artist means: not to reckon and count; to ripen like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of Spring without fear lest no Summer might come after. It does come. But it comes only to the patient ones, who are there as if eternity lay in front of them, so unconcernedly still and far. I am learning it daily, learning it through pains to which I am grateful: patience is all!

A work of art is good if it is arisen out of necessity

Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside

I pour the red liquid over the white mound, watching it glisten and the vapor rising as Louis bends that military instrument into a beam of lyrical sound.

Man's hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or a moaning dove.

The Artist always has the masters in his eyes.

The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly.

Always the seer is a sayer. Somehow his dream is told; somehow he publishes it with solemn joy: sometimes with pencil on canvas, sometimes with chisel on stone, sometimes in towers and aisles of granite, his soul's worship is builded; sometimes in anthems of indefinite music, but clearest and most permanent, in words.

The true poem is the poet's mind; the true ship is the ship-builder. In the man, could we lay him open, we should see the reason for the last flourish and tendril of his work; as every spine and tint in the sea-shell preexist in the secreting organs of the fish.

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I see the boundless opulence of the pencil, the indifferency in which the artist stands free to choose out of the possible forms. If he can draw everything, why draw anything?

The true poem is the poet's mind; the true ship is the ship-builder.

My life is a creative act--like a painting, or a concerto.

Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.

Creativity is a continual surprise.

I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of brushes like quail before gunshot.

And finally, have you trained well enough so you can say what you want to say without getting hamstrung? Have you written enough so that you are relaxed and can allow the truth to get out without being ruined by self-conscious posturings or changed by a desire to become rich?