Quotes About Creativity

As any artist can tell you, it is easier to reach perfection than to stop there.

The artist's talent sits uneasy as an object of public acclaim, having been so long an object of private despair.

A painting is what you make of it, besides which, 'Moon, Weeping' has a better ring to it than 'Paintbrush, Dripping.'

Ideas gathered from reading will always be bookish ideas. Go to the persons and objects directly. Have a painter's eye.

Authentic expression is something you can't invent. When you capture it, it's worthy of admiration.

Cinema, like music, should wash away the dust of everyday life.

L'oeil superficiel, l'oreille profonde et inventive. Le sifflement d'une locomotive imprime en nous la vision de toute une gare.

There must, at a certain point, be a transformation. If not, there is no art.

To Bresson, art is the only possible escape from the bitterness of impotence.

Art is not in the mind. Art is in the eye, in the ear, in the memory of our senses. Images, dreams.

Ton public n'est ni le public des livres, ni celui des spectacles, ni celui des expositions, ni celui des concerts. Tu n'as à satisfaire ni le goût littéraire, ni le théâtral, ni le pictural, ni le musical.

Prefer what intuition whispers in your ear to what you have done and redone ten times in your head.

When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best -- that is inspiration.

Hostility to art is also hostility to the new, to the unforeseen.

It is in its pure form that an art hits hard.

Provoke the unexpected. Expect it.

I know that if odour were visible, as colour is, I'd see the summer garden in rainbow clouds.

if the poet becomes what-is, then what-is (and no one else) becomes the author of the poem.

By all means break the rules, and break them beautifully, deliberately and well.

In a badly designed book, the letters mill and stand like starving horses in a field. In a book designed by rote, they sit like stale bread and mutton on the page. In a well-made book, where designer, compositor and printer have all done their jobs, no matter how many thousands of lines and pages, the letters are alive. They dance in their seats. Sometimes they rise and dance in the margins and aisles.

When you think intensely and beautifully, something happens. That something is called poetry. If you think that way and speak at the same time, poetry gets in your mouth. If people hear you, it gets in their ears. If you think that way and write at the same time, then poetry gets written. But poetry exists in any case. The question is only: are you going to take part, and if so, how?

A man who would letterspace lower case would steal sheep, Frederic Goudy liked to say. If this wisdom needs updating, it is chiefly to add that a woman who would letterspace lower case would steal sheep as well .

Type designers are, at their best, the Stradivarii of literature: not merely makers of salable products, but artists who design and make the instruments that other artists use.

Inscribe all human effort with one word, Artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!