Quotes About Creativity

To take photographs is to hold one's breath when all faculties converge in the face of fleeing reality. It is at that moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy. To take photographs means to recognize—simultaneously and within a fraction of a second—both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one's head, one's eye, and one's heart on the same axis.

How do you make your pictures? — I don't know, it's not important.

qualunque cosa noi facciamo, kertész l'ha fatto prima.

You have to try and stay alive in front of what you see, struggle with reality, get rid of habits and routines. You have to train yourself to look all the time, swinging between the conscious and the unconscious. In a sort of dance, I practice immediate, automatic, and intuitive drawing. I get a Normas joy from it. But the flaunting of reportage—getting into situations, "working" a subject—that is not photography.

las manos son aún más bellas cuando no imitan nada.

There are wonderful things in real jazz, the talent for improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft.

All that is not useful in a picture is detrimental. A work of art must be harmonious in its entirety; for superfluous details would, in the mind of the beholder, encroach upon the essential elements.

The only valid thing in art is the one thing that cannot be explained, to explain away the mystery of a great painting would do irreplaceable harm, for whenever you explain or define something you substitute the explanation or the definition for the

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play.

I want to reach that state of condensation of sensations which constitutes a picture.

Drawing is putting a line round an idea.

It is only after years of preparation that the young artist should touch color - not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression.

A picture must possess a real power to generate light and for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light.

I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape, but the human figure. It is through it that I best succeed in expressing the almost religious feeling I have towards life.

I want to reach that condensation of sensations that constitutes a picture.

Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.

You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject.

Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.

You study, you learn, but you guard the original naïveté. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.

From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.