Quotes About Artistry

That is what I did with Jack, and that's why he liked to do the readings with me because he knew I was there for him, and for our ability to blend the poetry and the music.

When I stop working, I go out and start working again. Most people paint a picture, or whatever they do, and go home. For me, it has to be continuous.

In large measure becoming an artist consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive.

But the important point here is not that you have — or don't have — what other artists have, but rather that it doesn't matter. Whatever they have is something needed to do their work — it wouldn't help you in your work even if you had it. Their magic is theirs. You don't lack it. You don't need it. It has nothing to do with you. Period. EXPECTATIONS

Between the initial idea and the finished piece lies a gulf we can see across, but never fully chart. The truly special moments in artmaking lie in those moments when concept is converted to reality — those moments when the gulf is being crossed.

It's been a tough century for modesty, craftsmanship and tenderness.

We do not long remember those artists who followed the rules more diligently than anyone else. We remember those who made the art from which the "rules" inevitably follow.

Artists come together in the clear knowledge that when all is said and done, they will return to their studio and practice their art alone. Period. That simple truth may be the deepest bond we share.

This book is about what it feels like to sit in your studio or classroom, at your wheel or keyboard, easel or camera, trying to do the work you need to do.

I was like a well trained pianist who knows which note to hit, but can't make the music his own.

In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets.

Most of us become great artists for me I cannot hear music only have memories of sounds. Feeling vibrations, I'm able to read music.

When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn't acting. It's following instructions. Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that. So the director's task is just that – to direct, to point the way. Then the actor takes over. And he must be allowed the space, the freedom to express himself in the role. Without that space, an actor is no more than an unthinking robot with a chest-full of push-buttons.

A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.

A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightening.

Acting is not about anything romantic, not even fantasy, although you do create fantasy.

Her needlework both plain and ornamental was excellent, and she might have put a sewing machine to shame.

Bowie himself said, "Even though I was very shy, I found I could get onstage if I had a new identity."2 After reviewing his troubled early years, British psychologist Oliver James wrote, "What seems to have been the trigger for his shift from distressed and tortured to emotionally healthy, was his adoption of personas in his musical career."3

I want Poetry and Power and the young men who create it.

We do this basically for ourselves. People appreciate it, which is cool, but I think they appreciate that we're doing it for ourselves. We're doing it our way, and how people like it is not up to us. We like it.

The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.

Likewise a poet.

And every good artist knows that the gift comes from somewhere else, and it's there for a reason, and that's to make the world a better place.

An artist's career always begins tomorrow.