Quotes About Artistry

In fact, the element of play has an important role in my life, and I think that should be the case in the life of every artist. Our life is occupied with playing, whether we play an instrument or a role.

He does see Himself as the Divine Artist. Of course, He is also a blunderer—so many of His creations are botched. A good many are disasters which He then proceeds to plow back into the food chain. That is His only means of keeping His multitudinous, mediocre, and often meaningless spawnings from choking the existence of the rest. Yet, I will admit, He is dogged. He is still looking to improve His previous creations.

I see the game now. You can't write with ink, and you can't write with your own heart's blood, but you can write with the heart's blood of some one else. You have to be a cad before you can be an artist. O'Henry 'The Plutonian Fire' (1905)

He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it.

I think of myself first as a singer, meaning an interpreter. Then I think of myself as a writer. It is an outlet I have to have. I get very hard to live with without something happening to write about.

I gladly sacrifice pear-shaped tones in favor of down-to-earth emotion.

A song should stand on its own and on what a singer does with it. It shouldn't need a lot of extra help to be good.

Just like a spider with a line of silk! Did you ever see them throw themselves out into space to weave? They're taking a chance, every single time. They got to do it or else they'd never create anything. But I bet it don't feel good, even to a spider.

A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is. When I speak of writing, the image that comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or a literary tradition; it is the person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and, alone, turns inward. Amid his shadows, he builds a new world with words.

what is important or a painter is not a thing's reality but it's shape, and what is important for a novelist is not the course of events but their ordering, and what is important for a memorist is not the factual accuracy of the account, but it's symmetry.

In the realm of book arts, whenever a masterpiece is made, whenever a splendid picture makes my eyes water out of joy and causes a chill to run down my spine, I can be certain of the following: Two styles never brought together have come together to create something new and wondrous.

A great painter does not content himself by affecting us with his masterpieces; ultimately, he succeeds in changing the landscape of our minds. Once a miniaturist's artistry enters our souls this way, it becomes the criterion for the beauty of our world.

Build slow and sure; 'tis for life, young man. In the elder days of art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part, For the gods see everywhere. — Longfellow.

Writers create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.

The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.

A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.

I don't play accurately--any one can play accurately--but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life.

Behind the perfection of a man's style, must lie the passion of a man's soul.

The world is made by the singer for the dreamer.

Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life...I have put only my talent into my works.

Every person who is really an artist desires to create inside of himself another, deeper, more interesting life than the one that actually surrounds him.