Quotes about Artistry

They ought to put out the eyes of painters as they do goldfinches in order that they can sing better.

I love country music, blues, and punk, and one day I might make those kinds of records.

Applause was designed to bemuse and confuse you until it explodes into a chorus that reminds us why we love pop music.

Every time I do anything, I have to ask myself: Is it a good role, and is it right to do it? There may be sex or nudity or violence in the script, and then you have to say: Is it gratuitous just out to shock people? Or is it there because it has to be? If a role demands it, and it isn't gratuitous, I'll do it. It's my job, after all. I'm an actress.

The function of the artist is to invent, not to chronicle.

We are born makers. We move what we're learning from our heads to our hearts through our hands.

The soul of the artist cannot remain hidden.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short." [ Letter to Harrison Blake ; November 16, 1857]

If you can speak what you will never hear,—if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things

Thoreau thought obsessively about time and the various ways it could be manipulated by writing; he collapses the two years he spent at Walden into one for the sake of "convenience," but surely also for the sake of artistry.

The best thing is to always keep honest people around, because when you have a bunch of yes men around that know that you're making a mistake but let you go on with it, that's when it ruins your mind state as an artist.

Writing is a form of mischief.