Artistic Process Quotes

“You are an explorer. You understand that every time you go into the studio, you are after something that does not yet exist.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, Letters to a Young Artist

“Storytelling is inherently dangerous. Consider a traumatic event in your life. Think about how you experienced it. Now think about how you told it to someone a year later. Now think about how you told it for the hundredth time. It's not the same thing. Most people think perspective is a good thing: you can figure out characters' arcs, you can apply a moral, you can tell it with understanding and context. But this perspective is a misrepresentation: it's a reconstruction with meaning, and as such bears little resemblance to the event.”
― Charlie Kaufman

“Commit to finding the true nature of art. Go for that thing no one can teach you. Go for that communion, that real communion with your soul, and the discipline of expressing that communion with others. That doesn't come from competition. That comes from being one with what you are doing.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, Letters to a Young Artist

“My job in my work is not to acquire power; it's to question power.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, Letters to a Young Artist

“I left Mephistopheles, the angels, and the remnants of our handmade world, saying, "I choose Earth.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids

“It all boils down to instinct, good or bad. Artistic creation must be spontaneous. It comes from the heart; it has to pass through the brain; and still one needs the guts, and good old, indispensable technique, to bring it to the light of day. That, at least, is how I see the process, not that I have ever been able to pin it down very exactly in my own case. You hear a voice inside. You obey it, and produce whatever it told you to produce; and then you wait and see. And oh! The trouble you're in for.”
― Maurice Chevalier

“All writers are demonic dreamers. Writing is an act of sharing experiences and offering of an individualistic perspective of our private attitudes pertaining to whatever topics of thought intrigues the author. Writing is a twitchy art, which attempts to employ linguist building blocks handed-down from past generations. Writers’ word choices form a structure of conjoined sentences when overlaid with the lingua of modern culture. Writers attempt to emulate in concrete form the synesthesia of our personal pottage steeped in our most vivid feelings. Writing a personal essay calls for us to sort out a jungle of lucid observations and express in a tangible technique our unique interpretation of coherent observations interlaced with that effusive cascade of yearning, the universal spice of unfilled desire, which turmoil of existential angst swamps us.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“From the beginning, Fassbinder's films showed that with the help of art it is possible to defend oneself against the destructive forces of the present, and that in the artistic process there is some kind of labour of resistance and a possibility of survival. It gradually also became a fundamental theme of his films.”
― Christian Braad Thomsen, Fassbinder: The Life And Work Of A Provocative Genius

“Philosophers wonder when they do not know, artists when they do.”
― Raheel Farooq

“No sketches first, no studies, that's long past:
I do what many dream of, all their lives,
--Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
And fail in doing. I could count twenty such
On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
Who strive--you don't know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,--
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter)--so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.
Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,
Enter and take their place there sure enough,
Though they come back and cannot tell the world.”
― Robert Browning, Men and Women

“Vronsky’s interest in art and the Middle Ages did not last long. He had sufficient taste for art to be unable to finish his picture. He ceased painting it because he was dimly conscious that its defects, little noticeable at first, would become striking if he went on.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Even science is art, when it flows pure and free - literature is art, when it flows pure and free - mathematics is art, when it flows pure and free. Any act of the mind that flows pure and free, is art, for freedom is the soul of art.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Lives to Serve Before I Sleep

“Fascinated by the great symbols of the collective history, I use them as an alphabet to communicate.”
― Nuno Roque

“An author’s operating charter is to unearth embedded symbols that reflect complementary and inconsistent relationships of our collective assemblage, combine harmonizing and contradictory conceptions that motivate us, and delve larger truths out of variable and erratic elements of human nature.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“The human brain acts as a mere transducer of electrical energy. Our senses are on full alert when we are in danger. In contrast, when we are relatively safe and secure, our senses tend to slumber, making the world pass by analogous to a fuzzy dream composed of meaningless impressions. Inner turmoil causes energy surges in the brain. A spontaneously convulsing brain is an artistic brain. It is useful to write whenever one is in pain or feeling particularly introspective. Trauma awakens us from a sedated life. A clicked on brain displays greater sensitivity to the synesthetic perceptions that fill life with a diversity of sounds, colors, tastes, tactile feelings, and odors.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Writers resist the terrifying silence that engulfs us.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Some writers probe their quest for individuality; others explore loneliness, anxiety, and sense of alienation. Writers lament injustice, grief, and dejection. Some writers devote their efforts to an appraisal of ontological torment. Some writers seek to examine the implications of life and death by reflecting upon the restrictions and insufficiency of the human condition. Some writers survey the ramifications of fractured human consciousness in an industrial and scientific community undergoing rapid technological changes. Many writers attempt to release their inner tension and employ writing as a transformative process to effect personal change in their lives. If a person writes as they dream, they will encounter an inner world that assists them function in an awakened state.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“For me personally, The Organic Creative Process helped me to discover what kind of actor I want to be; but this is a process that goes beyond acting. It actually revealed to me what I want to do in my life and that I have to work hard to make it real.”
― Giovanni Morassutti, Accidentally On Purpose: Reflections on Life, Acting and the Nine Natural Laws of Creativity

“You are worthy, regardless of the outcome. You will keep making your work, regardless of the outcome. You will keep sharing your work, regardless of the outcome. You were born to create, regardless of the outcome. You will never lose trust in the creative process, even if you don’t understand the outcome.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“That a work of creation struggles and insistently demands to be brought into being is a fact that no genuine artist would think of denying.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers

“Average acting is like jerking without an orgasm.”
― Giovanni Morassutti

“Behind every beautiful thing built by man there is a beautiful idea and behind every beautiful idea there is a beautiful inspiration, and behind every beautiful inspiration there is a magical glance of the artistic mind to the world!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“When I paint, I sail through luminescent swirls and enter domains of rhythmic energy and brilliant color.”
― Ellen Palestrant, Have You Ever Had a Hunch?: The Importance of Imagination, Fantasy & Creative Thinking