Quotes About Creativity

But secretly I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revalation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not.

I'm certain, as we filled down the great staircase, that I appeared the same as ever, a moping twelve years-old, all arms and legs. But secretly I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not.

I wish I could just project everything on the paper,

To be an artist is to enter into competition with god.

Why do we write? A chorus erupts. Because we cannot simply live.

Writing is not some quiet, closet act.

I preferred an artist who transformed his time, not mirrored it." - reference to Andy Warhol

In my way of thinking, anything is possible. Life is at the bottom of things and belief at the top, while the creative impulse, dwelling in the center, informs all.

He dreamed of amassing musicians from all over the world in Woodstock and they would sit in a field in a circle and play and play. It didn't matter what key or tempo or what melody, they would keep on playing through their discordance until they found a common language.

Robert was concerned with how to make the photograph, and I with how to be the photograph.

He wasn't certain whether he was a good or bad person. Whether he was altruistic. Whether he was demonic. But he was certain of one thing. He was an artist. And for that he would never apologize.

It's not so easy writing about nothing.

I was attracted to Robert's work because his visual vocabulary was akin to my poetic one, even if we seemed to be moving toward different destinations. Robert always would tell me, "Nothing is finished until you see it.

He wrote me a note to say we would create art together and we would make it, with or without the rest of the world.

I wrote to give myself something to read.

Your work, coming from a fluid source, can be traced to the naked song of your youth. You spoke then of holding hands with God. Remember, through everything, you have always held that hand, grip it hard, Robert, and don't let go. (letter to Robert Mapplethorpe, 1970)

I drew no line between life and art. I was the same on- as offstage.

Everything I came up with seemed irreverent or irrelevant.

Of all your work, you are still your most beautiful. The most beautiful work of all.

Secretly I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not.

An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God. The guy who built the Tower of Babel was the first artist. If I had to check out where I was in other centuries, I was his old lady. If I wasn't the guy, I was his chick. He knew that there was more and God got jealous. Even gods get uptight. Women make gods uptight. Everyone thinks of God as a man -- you can't help it -- Santa Claus was a man, therefore God has to be a man. But a man comes once. A woman never stops coming.

We would work side by side for hours, in a state of mutual concentration.

And then I walked out, straight through the twilight, treading the beaten earth. There were no dust clouds, no signs of anyone, but I paid no mind. I was my own lucky hand of solitaire. The desert landscape unchanging: a long, unwinding scroll that I would one day amuse myself by filling. I'm going to remember everything and then I'm going to write it all down. An aria to a coat. A requiem for a café. That's what I was thinking, in my dream, looking down at my hands.

Somehow I started introducing writing into my drawings, and after a time, the language took over and I started getting very involved with the handwriting and then the look of the handwriting.