Quotes About Artistry

See, I'm not trying to write. It just comes out when it comes out. So there is no block! Like, I'm not sitting down, going [frantically], "Oh my God, I've got to write a song! I really, really have to … Oh my God!" Hey, if I don't write a song, I don't record a song. Hell, it just gives me more time to do other things.

The world is full of musicians who can play great, and you wouldn't cross the road to see them. It's people who have this indefinable attitude that are the good ones.

My report card comments for the 'Atom Heart Mother' track would be: good idea, could try harder. 'Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast' on the second side is a similar example.

The R&B classics were mixed up with our longer workouts, so that 'Interstellar Overdrive', which we often used as an opener, might be followed immediately by a very straight cover of Bo Diddley's 'Can't Judge A Book' or Chuck Berry's 'Motivating', one of Syd's favourites.

These were the early warning signals of fundamental disagreements within the band. Lines were being drawn in the sand, indistinctly and involuntarily, but being drawn nonetheless. At the risk of simplifying things too far, David and Rick felt more comfortable with a purer musical solution. Roger and I were drawn towards experimenting with the balances, and making more of the non-musical elements. David always preferred a certain amount of echo, Roger preferred the sound to be much drier.

If you're an original thinker, you are going get told 'no' a lot, and you have to be able to hear 'no' many times from the bankers and trust that at some point, someone is going to recognize that you are an artist and not a can of soda.

The people who built these churches understood wood, and they were not in a hurry.

This was the kind of work I understood. I knew where wood came from, that for every tree cut down, another was planted, that I could make a chair both functional and beautiful. I was adding to the world, not taking.

Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist, there are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges and absorbs the impact.

As for style, there is something about the way musicians dress-they seem to be able to create their own world within their fashion alone.

Un artista anche nell'angoscia esprime tranquillità.

Per lui non v'è soggetto spregevole nella natura. Nell'insignificante l'artista creatore è grande come nell'eccelso; la cosa più bassa per lui non è bassa, perché invisibilmente trapela in essa l'anima meravigliosa di chi crea, e la cosa bassa viene così sublimamente espressa, perché passa attraverso il purgatorio della sua anima.

There is no separating yourself from the things you make, he thought. If you are a cesspool, what else can your work be except shit?

You can't edit a blank page

I just want to make my music, and I want it to stand on its own.

I genuinely don't feel that anything that's been written or said about me has overshadowed my music, and that's the most important thing as far as I'm concerned.

I'm always going to do that - record and make music.

I didn't think it was fair to my music to label me as the daughter of somebody - I didn't think it described me very well and I didn't think it had anything to do with my music.

To listen through aural debris to Francesco Tamagno (1850–1905), Verdi's original Otello, or to Alessandro Moreschi (1858–1922), the last castrato, is a fascinating experience but one that cannot be endured for much longer than holding one's head down a wishing well. The pitch is wobbly, the static obtrusive and any impression of the singer's musicality requires an imaginative leap on the listener's part.

A slavish concern for the composition of words is the sign of a bankrupt intellect. Be gone, odious wasp! You smell of decayed syllables.

Inspiration without intellect is useless and dangerous; and the poet will be able to perform few wonders, when he is astonished by wonders.

It was beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are.

I'll give you the whole secret to short story writing. Here it is. Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2.

Write what you like; there is no other rule.