Quotes About Artistry

Anybody with artistic ambitions is always trying to reconnect with the way they saw things as a child.

The work is at such a high level and is so well executed, it really is a matter of taste... [Source: Project Runway — but consider, applied to the theme of book reviews, it seems apropos!]

To this day, while I admire poetic opacity in certain authors and filmmakers, I cannot tolerate it in my own work. You may or may not like something I've written, but I'll do my damnedest to ensure that you know what I wanted to say.)

To create anything… is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic.

Truly creative people work for work's own sake, and if they make a public discovery or become famous that is a bonus. What

It's going to be hard writing for you. I can't dip into the usual well. I have to learn to write the way I used to like to write, not the way I'm paid to write

He was ... at peace with the world, for it is not in the praise of others that the true artist revels, but in the knowledge that he has satisfied himself.

The function of the artist is to provide what life does not.

If there's a thing, a scene, maybe, an image that you want to see real bad, that you need to see but it doesn't exist in the world around you, at least not in the form that you envision, then you create it so that you can look at it and have it around, or show it to other people who wouldn't have imagined it because they perceive reality in a more narrow, predictable way. And that's it. That's all an artist does.

What mattered to Abu was the music of the sentence. 'A shadow does not belong to the object that casts it.' To Abu, it was a little poem. And in general, it was the poetics, the music of things that tossed his confetti.

The function of the artist,' the Navajo answered, 'is to provide what life does not.

That's the value of the artist... Even when they aren't aware, they're dreaming our dreams for us.

Could a person choose to be or not to be an artist?

Can't they comprehend that not ever'thing's done for a paycheck? That sometimes you just make a thing 'cause you wanna see how it'll turn out, 'cause you have a feeling in your gut that it oughta be made?

But . . ." said Sissy. Sissy said "but" while sitting on her butt on a butte. The poetic possibilities of the English language are endless.

That's the value of artists, isn't it? Even when they aren't aware of it, they're dreaming our dreams for us.

We each took a fierce delight in introducing the other to some new idea or development, the next amazing artist or record album, always hustling to out-avant the other's garde. It was exciting, stimulating, but also draining, especially when coupled as it was with mutual romantic jealousy, arguably the dumbest, most useless of human emotions.

This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't matter to me what your position is. You've got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. This is no time for anything else than the best that you've got.

They believe they know before the music does what their hands, their feet are to do, but that illusion is the music's secret drive: the control it tricks them into believing is theirs; the anticipation it anticipates.

belleza no era simplemente algo que contemplar, era algo que una podía hacer.

Everything I write for the first time is written with a pencil.

I need to use everything—sound, image, performance—to get at the full meaning of the story

Perhaps thee will best understand what Abigail is like if I tell thee that when she quilts she prefers to stitch in the ditch, hiding her poor stitches in the seams between the blocks.

Appliqué is very popular here. To my eye it has a facile look about it, as if the maker has not thought hard but simply cut out whatever shape has taken her fancy and sewn it on to a bit of cloth. Piecing together patchwork, on the other hand, requires more consideration and more accuracy; that is why I like it, though some say it is too cold and geometrical.