Art is not a thing: it is a way. – Elbert Hubbard
Everything is art. A cook, a shoemaker, a hairdresser are all artists according to how talented they are. This whole mess of labels and titles has nothing to do with me. I am absolutely indifferent to the noise and commotion. It isn’t the medium that’s important but the person that expresses himself through it. I just continue to look for those special moments, the way a fisherman does when he tells you, “They’re biting today.” – Jacques Henri Lartigue
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others. – Mark Twain
Many people are afraid to express themselves, doubting that what they have to offer is worth it. If they have a real drive, they will do it anyway. But still, they can be ashamed to share it with an audience.
The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. – Sylvia Plath
In today’s society one can feel as a failure if he doesn’t get to the top. Being average can sound as a terrible offense. Who wants to make a mediocre art?
The only sin is mediocrity. – Martha Graham
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. – Mark Twain
You may be laughed at, but you need to keep going anyway. You can’t be easily discouraged.
It has always been the creative mind, the original thinker, that has moved the world ahead in terms of ideas. And so often those very people – the creative ones—are the ones deemed crazy, or dangerous, or useless, by those in power. Remember Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. Think of van Gogh. James Joyce. Stravinsky. The early Impressionists. Think of today’s NEA. Of the teachers out there who can no longer be creative because they have to prepare students for standardized tests. – Lois Lowry
Creating something new may require destroying the previous (or current).
The passion for destruction is also a creative passion. – Michael Bakunin
The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create—so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off…They must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating. – Pearl S. Buck
There is that demonic drive in some people, an urge to create. It’s a do or die thing for them.
The frustration of creation that is stifled/unreached is one of the greatest agonies possible in life. It is like the loss of a child, the death of a beloved wife or husband, the destruction of an irreplaceable shrine… – anonymous
It’s not about the outcome, it’s about the process.
And in fact artistic experience lies so incredibly close to that of sex, to its pain and its ecstasy, that the two manifestations are indeed but different forms of one and the same yearning and delight. – Rainer Maria Rilke
(youqueen.com)
