Quotes About Artistry

I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg—I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish the idea lets go and runs off.

I do not use my intellect to write my stories and books; I have a gut reaction to the things that my subconscious gives me.

I wish for you a wrestling match with your creative muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories... Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.

The artist must work so hard, so long, that a brain develops and lives, all of itself, in his fingers.

I love to write. It's all I do.

A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I'd never even thought that thought before.

Each of the men I have listed seized a bit of the quicksilver of life, froze it for all time and turned, in the blaze of their creativity, to point at it and cry, Isn't this good! And it was good.

Bir adama birkaç dize ÅŸiir ver, sonunda kendini yarat?lm??lar?n efendisi sans?n...

If there is no feeling, there cannot be great art.

He built an architecture of Bach, stone by exquisite stone, raising a music cathedral so vast

Vladimir Nabokov, contemning readers who identified with characters in fiction, remarked that the best readers identify with the artist.

He glanced at me, then chuckled. "Sprezzatura's an Italian word. Means the art of making something difficult look easy.

I myself have never enjoyed anything more than writing. I love to live in that world.

It isn't the subjects we write about but the seriousness and subtlety of our expression that determines the worth of or effort.

If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?

All actors are whores. They want only one thing: to seduce you.

They can't give you all that, Mr Jimson,' said Walter, who was upset. 'It wouldn't be right. What would they give you seven years for?' 'Being Gulley Jimson,' I said, 'and getting away with it.

I think people who are creative are the luckiest people on earth. I know that there are no shortcuts, but you must keep your faith in something Greater than You, and keep doing what you love. Do what you love, and you will find the way to get it out to the world.

Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as creator but seldom see creator as the literal term for artist. I am suggesting you take the term creator quite literally. You are seeking to forge a creative alliance, artist-to-artist with the Great Creator. Accepting this concept can greatly expand your creative possibilities.

The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union; the heart of the mystical union is an experience of creativity.

Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.

Art is not about thinking something up. It is about the opposite—getting something down.

It is all too easy as an artist to allow the shape of our career to be dictated to us by others. We can so easily wait to be chosen. Such passivity invites despair. To remain healthy and vital, artists must stay proactive in their own behalf.