Louise Berliawsky Nevelson Quotes

I'm a work horse. I like to work. I always did. I think that there is such a thing as energy, creation overflowing. And I always felt that I have this great energy and it was bound to sort of burst at the seams, so that my work automatically took its place with a mind like mine. I've never had a day when I didn't want to work. I've never had a day like that. And I knew that a day I took away from the work did not make me too happy. I just feel that I'm in tune with the right vibrations in the universe when I'm in the process of working ... In my studio I'm as happy as a cow in her stall.

If you have got a living force and you're not using it, nature kicks you back. The blood boils just like you put it in a pot.

When you are doing a piece you are with it. You don't want to wait until next week, when experience will have given you something else.

I see no reason why I should tickle stones or waste time on polishing bronze.

In my studio I'm as happy as a cow in her stall. That's the only place where everything is all right.

I make collages. I join the shattered world creating a new harmony.

I don't demand that all work be a masterpiece. What I am doing is the right thing for me - that is what I am and this is living. It reflects me and I reflect it.

Character is the architect of the being.

We must create our own world.

I never for one minute questioned what I had to do. I did not think for one minute that I didn't have what I had. If just didn't dawn on me. And so if you know what you have, then you know that there's nobody on earth that can affect you.

In the end, as you get older and older, your life is your life, and you are alone with it.

I was discouraged about life, discouraged about people being blind, but I don't think I had a day that I ever questioned creativity. There has never been a day like that.

[Good taste] is a nineteenth-century concept. And good taste has never really been defined. The effort of projecting 'good taste' is so studied that it offends me. No, I prefer to negate that. We have to put a period to so-called good taste.

You know when I decided to become professional - that means to expose yourself naked to the world with the other creative minds - I said, 'I'm going into areas I don't know. I might just fall right down to hell and kill myself.

Who is an artist? I say we take a title. No one gives it to us. We make our lives.

I believe that the physical is the geography of the being.

Early in school, they called me 'the artist.' When teachers wanted things painted, they called upon me, they called upon 'the artist.' I am not saying that I learned my name, animals can learn their names, I am saying that they learned it.

It gave me great pleasure to think that I could take wood, make it good, and make people like Rockefeller buy it with paper money.

And I saw darkness for weeks. It never dawned on me that I could come out of it, but you heal. Nature heals you, and you do come out of it. All of a sudden I saw a crack of light ... then all of a sudden I saw another crack of light. Then I saw forms in the light. And I recognized that there was no darkness, that in darkness there'll always be light.

I knew that a day I took away from the work did not make me too happy.

I feel totally female. I didn't compete with men and I don't want to look like a man! I love being a lady and dressing up and masquerading and wearing all the fineries. I'm breaking down the idea that the artist has to look poor, with berets.

A woman may not hit a ball stronger than a man, but it is different. I prize that difference.

In the first grade, I already knew the pattern of my life. I didn't know the living of it, but I knew the line ... From the first day in school until the day I graduated, everyone gave me one hundred plus in art. Well, where do you go in life? You go to the place where you got one hundred plus.

I think most artists create out of despair. The very nature of creation is not a performing glory on the outside, it's a painful, difficult search within.

I think all great innovations are built on rejections.

Most of us have to be transplanted before we blossom.

My husband's family was terribly refined. Within their circle you could know Beethoven, but God forbid if you were Beethoven.

I'm in tune with the right vibrations in the universe when I'm in the process of working.

True strength is delicate.

I still want to do my work. I still want to do my livingness. And I have lived. I have been fulfilled. I recognized what I had, and I never sold it short. And I ain't through yet.

I've been so lonely for long periods of my life that if a rat walked in I would have welcomed it.

The outside wold pressures you into a mold, but if you don't accept that - you gamble with life. Call it gambling.

No matter how individual we humans are, we are a composite of everything we are aware of. We are a mirror of our times.

The freer that women become, the freer men will be. Because when you enslave someone, you are enslaved.

I never liked the middle ground-the most boring place in the world.