Paintbrush Quotes

Perfect worlds do not exist. There are only the funny, strange, weeping, singing, truncated, and imperfect universes created by the gods of paintbrush and musical instruments, the gods who infuse their creations with their own blood, their own soul. When he looks at these worlds, the true Lord of Hosts, the creator of the universe, probably cannot help but smile mockingly ~ Vasily Grossman

I was asked, "How can we change the world?" And I answered, "You will never be able to change the world by projecting ideal images to aspire for. The only way to change the world is to penetrate the grassroots, to penetrate at the groundbreaking level - to be a mason - to dig into the core where all the tar and lumpy mud is located and to work with that shit until you bring out something beautiful. We change the world by dressing wounds, by listening to forgotten voices of the lost, by getting our hands dirty. Nobody is going to be able to change the world by painting a lovely picture. You have to know how to make paint. Then teach the people how to use a paintbrush. Then teach the people how to make strokes, how to wash the paintbrush, and how to mount their own paintings onto the wall. Because the alchemy of the world, of humanity as a whole, is really just the collective alchemy of every individual. Take what is darkness and transmutate it into a shining thing. Changing the world is never about the changer; it is about the world. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Now, pull the knife toward you - never push it. You want to hold your blade the way an artist holds and controls a paintbrush. You have to anticipate a sudden flinch, jerk or quiver so that any cut is intentional, never accidental. Your sub is your precious canvas, and you want to be creative while always maintaining full control." Mark ~ Claire Thompson

You are a paintbrush in hands of the Artist. ~ Heidi Baker

When I prove it, it puts a target on Seth's back and a paintbrush in your hands. ~ Nora Sakavic

The full Moon's light poured into the room like a stroke from a wide paintbrush... ~ Peter Hammarberg

I use the computer as a paintbrush. It enables me to do in hours what would have taken months. ~ Leon Max

To me, it's like the difference between a pen and a paintbrush. Music draws from almost the identical place as art does, which really is that intangible - it's like you're pulling from the ether. I don't know where it comes from. Nobody really does. It sort of arrives when it wants to. ~ Brandon Boyd

Kurt [Cobain], from the moment he could hold a paintbrush in his hand, was painting. And from the moment he could hold a guitar, he was playing ~ Brett Morgen

This is Lina. My heart soars; I guess it recognises what my eyes do not. This is the woman who played with me when my parents were too busy. The one who helped me survive Many Ends the first three times. I love her, I do. Despite the fact that she once stabbed me with the end of a paintbrush. ~ Gena Showalter

Even when you're keeping score, golf is all about focusing on the shot at hand, the total score being a sum of those shots. On magic mushrooms, each shot was an act of self-expression - a karate kick, a pirouette, a paintbrush stroke. The course was an aren, a stage, and a canvas.

That's the way it felt playing in the backcountry, too. Going beyond the simple visual appreciation of a landscape and interacting with it beyond the reach of the physical body. Launching shots across canyons and rivers and down mountainsides and beaches. The motion of the body determining the motion of the ball - its flight an extension of the body like a spider riding the wind on a silken thread or a perfectly cast fly arcing down onto the surface of the water.

This is the part of the game that is hard for nongolfers to see. You have to play to feel it. It isn't visible through the TV screen or from outside the picket fences and privet hedges. The forest gets lost in tress of tartan and argyle, visors and V-necks. Golf seems to be one thing but is very much another, and backcountry golf and mushroom night golf are as true to the nature of the game as any stuffy country club championship or Saturday Nassau or fourball. ~ John Dunn

We did make use, from time to time, of candles, neckties, scarves, shoelaces, a little water-color paintbrush, her hairbrush, butter, whipped cream, strawberry jam, Johnson's Baby Oil, my Swedish hand vibrator, a fascinating bead necklace she had, miscellaneous common household items, and every molecule of flesh that was exposed to air or could be located with strenuous search. ~ Spider Robinson

What will I die with in my hand?
A paintbrush (for houses), an M15
a hammer or ax, a book a gavel,
a candlestick
tiptoeing upstairs.
What will I hold or will I
be caught with this usual thing
that I want to be my heart but
it is my brain and I turn it
over and over and over. ~ Jim Harrison

I watch her as she leaves. Everything about her is fluid as a river. Her messy hair, her xylophone voice, the strokes of her paintbrush. Even her camouflage army jacket hangs loose, flowing like ribbons. ~ Lisa Ann Sandell

My mind is my canvas; my thoughts are my color and paintbrush. ~ Debasish Mridha

I always loved to paint. As a kid, I liked to dip my paintbrush in black ink. They gave colors to me to use, but I didn't like them very much. ~ Pierre Soulages

You might not be able to run a paintbrush over unpleasant memories, but you can certainly cover them with a black cloth and pretend they don't exist. ~ Amy Matayo

The house was decorated in unrelieved white and black. The people were, too.
If it were up to me, I would carry a great big paintbrush around with me all the time, splashing color everywhere, decorating the world with peach and mauve, pink and lavender, orange and aquamarine. These folks seemed to think leeching the world of all color was cool. I decided they all must be deeply depressed. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Grief will
never truly be
done with you.
When
you're ready,
take it in your hands
like a paintbrush.
like a charcoal.
like a pen.
Turn it
into a thing that
could hang in museums.
- masterpiece ~ Amanda Lovelace

Your soul is your paintbrush, your world is your canvass, your life is your masterpiece. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.

What makes someone an artist? I don't think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artists who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.

An artists is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artists takes it personally.

That's why Bob Dylan is an artist, but an anonymous corporate hack who dreams up Pop 40 hits on the other side of the glass is merely a marketer. That's why Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, is an artists, while a boiler room of telemarketers is simply a scam.

Tom Peters, corporate gadfly and writer, is an artists, even though his readers are businesspeople. He's an artists because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn't care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it's important, not because he expect ~ Seth Godin

People say, 'Why don't you just paint with paintbrushes?' I say that I feel more connected to my painting using my skin. It's very tribal in a way - savage! ~ Meredith Ostrom

One of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous creations is his painting of The Last Supper. It is said that while Leonardo da Vinci was working on the painting he got into an argument with a fellow painter. Leonardo da Vinci was so mad at this colleague that in anger and out of spite he painted that man's face as the face of Judas in his painting of the upper room Supper.

But then, having completed that, Leonardo da Vinci turned to paint the face of Christ and he could not do it. It wouldn't come. He couldn't visualize it. He couldn't paint the face of Christ.

He put down his paintbrush and went to find the man from whom he was estranged. He forgave him; they reconciled with one another; they both apologized. They both forgave. That very evening Leonardo da Vinci had a dream and in that dream he saw the face of Christ. He rose quickly from his bed and finished the painting and it became one of his greatest masterpieces. ~ Fred Andrea

Bruce Miller, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, studies elderly patients with a relatively common form of brain disease called frontotemporal dementia, or FTD. He's found that in some cases where the FTD is localized on the left side of the brain, people who had never picked up a paintbrush or an instrument can develop extraordinary artistic and musical abilities at the very end of their lives. As their other cognitive skills fade away, they become narrow savants. ~ Joshua Foer

She had the kind of brilliant, decadent, Rococo beauty that made his fingers itch to grab a pencil or a paintbrush. ~ Talia Hibbert

I watched, enthralled, as he painted a large silver heart with flames edging one side. The whole design was Celtic in style. It was beautiful.
"Where did you get that from?" I asked in awe. I'd seen a lot of his work but never anything like this.
His eyes were on his heart, completely caught up in his work. "Just something kicking around in my head. Reminds me of you. Fiery and sweet, all at the same time. A flame in the dark, lighting my way." His voice ... his words ... I recognized one of his spirit-driven moments. It should've unnerved me, but there was something sensual about the way he spoke, something that made my breath catch. A flame in the dark.
He swapped out the silver paintbrush for a black one. Before I could stop him, he wrote over the heart: AYE. Underneath it, in smaller letters, he added: HONORARY MEMBER. ~ Richelle Mead

The universe is your canvass; love is your paintbrush. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

The canvases which Mr. St. Jones referred to with a paintbrush that was long and slightly bowed: for the most part interiors, or undergrounds, of pocked and craggy holes, rock vaults with mossy floors and slimy walls, or narrow scenic vistas that skinny silver streams squirmed through like sidewinders flipped on their backs, beneath downward grasping tentacles of roots, stalactites dagger-sharp and dangling by threads of stone, stalagmites teetering, all doused, frozen in molten electric white that suggested what a glimpse of hell might be, too beautiful, some still lifes too, great bulbous beets, hoary legumes, giant scallions, white carrots, tomatoes, berries, squash in huge radiant bowls, and portraits, signed by Ionia, of shadows, from which gleamed eyes and teeth and nails and, here and there, a glowing bubble, or scrotum, caught the eye. Near the door a counter clacked but rather quietly. ~ Douglas Woolf

I wanted an impressionistic effect, so I highlighted down her arms and the back of one hand. The other I left curled on one side and picked out her shoulders and collar bone. Then down to her navel, which I also highlighted in gold.
Then I took a small paintbrush and hovered above her nipples.
'Gold, or pink?'
'Oh, definitely gold,' she said.
I painted her nipples and areola, and she giggled.
'Interesting,' she said, lifting her head and looking down. ~ A.E. Rawson

Loan me a canvas and I will let down my guard. Loan me a paintbrush and I will reach into my soul. Loan me jars full of colors and I will submerge in a sea of possibilities. Loan me the time and you will see infinite versions of my being re-born. ~ Efrat Cybulkiewicz

I believe in art the way other people believe in god. I say that because books and paintings and music and photography gave me an alternate world to inhabit when the one I was born into was a dead zone. I say it because if you, even inside whatever terror itches your skin, pick up a pen or a paintbrush, a camera or clay or a guitar, you already have what you are afraid to choose. Volition. It was already in you. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

I do not possess the ability to draw or paint.
I can't sing or dance.
I can't knit or sew.
But I am an artist.
I have the ability to put onto paper, words that tell an intriguing story.
I am a writer.
A writer is someone who, with just words, can paint a beautiful picture.
A writer can open up a world of imagination you didn't realize was possible.
When you open up a book and become so consumed in the story, you feel like you're a part of it ... you're standing next to that character and feeling the same way that character feels,
That's the art of a writer.
I am an artist.
My inspiration is the world around me.
My paintbrush is my words.
My easel is my computer.
My canvas is the mind of my reader. ~ Bri Justine

At this point in our global ecological crisis, the survival of humanity will require a fundamental shift in our attitude toward nature: from finding out how we can dominate and manipulate nature to how we can learn from her. In this brilliant and hopeful book, Jay Harman shows us how far the new field of Biomimicry has already progressed toward this goal. The Shark's Paintbrush makes for fascinating and joyful reading - much needed in these dark times. ~ Fritjof Capra

Somewhere in the city, an orange cat finished chewing on a marjoram plant next to his studio apartment's door and leapt purring onto the shoulder of his owner, home early from work. Somewhere in the city, a young Chinese pianist sat down at a rehearsal hall and let his fingers play the first opening notes of the Emperor Concerto, notes that would envelop the small girl in row D of the Philharmonic that night in a shimmering cloud. A boy in Staten Island touched his finger to the lower back of the girl who had been just a friend until then. A woman in Hell's Kitchen stood in her dark attic garret, her paintbrush in hand, and stepped back from the painting of chartreuse highway and forest-green sky that had taken her two years to complete. A clerk in a Brooklyn bodega tapped her crimson fingernail on a box of gripe water, reassuring the new mother holding a wailing baby, and the mother's grateful smile almost made both of them cry themselves. ~ Stephanie Clifford

It is the last painting that I want to do, but I want to surpass myself in it. I am putting into it the experience of my 65 years and I do not want to touch a paintbrush again. ~ Jacques-Louis David

My brother distrusts the essential truth of memories; I distrust the way we colour them in. We each have our own cheap-mail-order paintbox, and our favourite hues. Thus, I remembered Grandma a few pages ago as "petite and unopinionated". My brother, when consulted, takes out his paintbrush and counterproposes "short and bossy. ~ Julian Barnes

I ask people of the world and children of light to start reflecting the stories of their souls to vibrate wisdom around the earth. Pick up a paintbrush or microphone. Press the inks of your pens to paper or tap words onto your screens, and start sharing what you know and have learned with the masses. Turn your personal painting into a piece of the earth's puzzle so that our unified assemblage of thoughts, experiences and lessons reveal common truths that cannot be denied. Imagine the changes that could happen if everyone suddenly stopped acting like someone else, became true to themselves, and celebrated the beauty of their uniqueness? Only after people have willingly removed their masks and costumes, and have begun pouring light from their hearts to reveal their vulnerability, dreams and pains, will we be able to see that beneath the surface we are all the same. After all, how can the world collectively fight for Truth, if soldiers in its army are void of truth? We must first all be true by putting truth in our words and actions. And to do so, everyone must learn to think and react with their conscience. Imagine what Truth could do to neutralize the clutches of evil once this black and white world suddenly became embraced by a strong rainbow of loud powerful voices. We could put color back into every home, every school, every industry, every nation, and every garden on earth where flowers have been crushed by corruption. ~ Suzy Kassem

Bah." Morpheus snags a paintbrush. "She should be draped in starlight and clouds, lace and softness. Nothing less should touch her skin." He points the bristles at Jeb. "I saw what you put Thomas in. You are not painting her into one of those goon suits. She is royalty. Dress her like royalty. Give her some glitter ... some glitz. And a crown. ~ A.G. Howard

I believe we create our own lives. And we create it by our thinking, feeling patterns in our belief system. I think we're all born with this huge canvas in front of us and the paintbrushes and the paint, and we choose what to put on this canvas. ~ Louise L. Hay

Heat rushes up my neck and I fall off a ladder holding a paintbrush dipped in red. ~ Tahereh Mafi

And then, as if thrown by a giant paintbrush, there appeared a huge, trembling, pear-shaped blob of the purest indigo. Luminous, numinous, it filled me with rapture: It was the color of heaven, the color, I thought, which Giotto had spent a lifetime trying to get but never achieved - never achieved, perhaps, because the color of heaven is not to be seen on earth. ~ Oliver Sacks

You are not painting her into one of those goon suits. She is royalty. Dress her like royalty. Give her some glitter . . . some glitz. And a crown." "Go back to your room, Morpheus." Jeb takes the paintbrush. "The grown-ups have work to do. ~ A.G. Howard

Sand as far as the eye can see, between the last hills and the sea -- the sea -- in the cold air of an afternoon almost past, and blessed by the wind that always blows from the north.

The beach. And the sea.

It could be perfection -- an image for divine eyes -- a world that happens, that's all, the mute existence of land and water, a work perfectly accomplished, truth --truth -- but once again it is the redeeming grain of a man that jams the mechanism of that paradise, a bagatelle capable on its own of suspending all that great apparatus of inexorable truth, a mere nothing, but one planted in the sand, an imperceptible tear in the surface of that sacred icon, a minuscule exception come to rest on the perfection of that boundless beach. To see him from afar he would be no more than a black dot: amid nothingness, the nothing of a man and a painter's easel. The easel is anchored by slender cords to four stones placed on the sand. It sways imperceptibly in the wind that always blows from the north. The man is wearing waders and a large fisherman's jacket. He is standing, facing the sea, twirling a slim paintbrush between his fingers. On the easel, a canvas. ~ Alessandro Baricco

Aria: I went to Hollis. Because I was looking for ... you know. Her. She was teaching an art class, so I ran inside, grabbed a paintbrush, and painted a scarlet A across her chest. You know, like that woman in The Scarlet Letter? It was awesome. She didn't know what hit her. And then I said, 'Now everyone will know what you've done'.
Ella: Do you realize that Hester Prynne is supposed to be a sympathetic character? ~ Sara Shepard

It isn't that it's too soon, you're on the back of my bike, it ain't too soon. You can buy sheets. You cannot install blinds."
"um ... " I mumbled. "Can you explain the difference?"
"Sheets are chick territory," he said without delay. "You gotta use tools, that's dick territory."
"Oh," I whispered.
"Don't tread on dick territory," he advised.
"So, um ... is a paintbrush a tool?" I asked cautiously.
"If you're paintin' the side of the house, yeah. If you're painting mud colored paint in a room, no."
"It's terracotta," I said softly.
"Whatever," he muttered, his mouth twitching.
"Or, the paint chip called it Mexican horizon. The blue is dawn sky."
"Definitely chick territory," Tate replied, losing the fight with his grin.
"What about ... pictures for the walls?" I asked.
"Chick," he answered instantly.
"Um ... could I ask that, instead of you getting angry and being a jerk, maybe you give me a head's up when I'm doing something stupid? ~ Kristen Ashley

You are the artist of your life. Don't give the paintbrush to anyone else. ~ Iva Ursano

My hands itched for a paintbrush, or maybe that was just an itch to touch her. Anywhere. Everywhere. ~ Tara A. Fuller

When Fancy still didn't answer, he took her hand, and with his red paintbrush, he wrote 'please' into her palm. ~ Dia Reeves

Her face was the best of Raquel Welch and Christy Brinkley combined. All atop a curvaceous body that would make Rubens drop his paintbrush."
-Adam W. Jones, Fate Ball ~ Adam W. Jones

How many times have people used a pen or paintbrush because they couldn't pull the trigger? ~ Virginia Woolf

A lot of people in the art world hate to use the word Photoshop like it's cheating or easy or something. I say bollocks to that. For me, it's my tool, my paintbrush if you like, and lets me create my own visual language. ~ Idris Khan

I am always happy up a ladder with a paintbrush in my hand. And I wish I had more time to spend in the garden - not least because I get good ideas for writing when I'm out there. ~ Diane Setterfield

The only happy artist is a dead artist, because only then you can't change. After I die, I'll probably come back as a paintbrush. ~ Sylvester Stallone

Real Dreams don't require you to abandon your family, quit your job, and move to Tahiti with your paintbrush. They just require that you search your soul for that deep dream you put aside-and go for it. And watch your life light up. ~ Barbara Sher

Aurora's studio she stole three charcoal sketches of me as a young boy, sketches in which my ruined hand had been wondrously metamorphosed, becoming, variously, a flower, a paintbrush and a sword. Miss Jaya took these sketches to my Dilly's flat and said they were a gift from the 'young Sahib'. Then she told Aurora that she had seen the teacher pinching them, and, excuse me, Begum Sahib, but that woman's attitude to our boy is not a moral one. ~ Salman Rushdie

There is nothing more humanly beautiful than a woman's breasts. Nothing more humanly beautiful, nothing more humanly mysterious than why men should want to caress, over and over again, with paintbrush or chisel or hand, these oddly curved fatty sacs, and nothing more humanly endearing than our complicity (I mean the complicity of women) in their obsession. ~ J.M. Coetzee

Never scare a woman who's holding a paintbrush, Blake said. ~ Carolyn Brown

Look at how beautiful this ink is. Now do you understand why I needed clear water? Water is the brightness of the day and the whiteness of the paper. Black is the velvet of night and the satiny ink of the paintbrush. If you know how to make ink correctly, you will never again be afraid of nightmares." Hokusai (The Old Man Mad About Drawing) ~ Francoise Place

We may never pick up a paintbrush or sculpt a masterpiece, but each one of us - without exception - is an artist in our own way. ~ Laurie Buchanan

I especially love all the instruments of art: inks, pens, paintbrushes, watercolors and oils, fine papers and canvases, and although I love to mess around with these tools and objects, I have minimal artistic skills. ~ Sharon Creech

Human, you are a machine, an organism, an animal, a primate, an artist, an athlete, a thinker, a sponge, a spirit, a comedian, a connoisseur, a cycle of breath in and breath out, an inventor, an expressor, an orator, a lover, an explorer, a creator, evolved. Your mind paints the flowers and the sky using the mind's eye as a paintbrush and light as paint. Splashing life across the blank canvas of reality. That's what you do. Every moment of every day. ~ Laren Grey Umphlett

The canvas is the door to another dimension. The paintbrush is the key. ~ Luhraw

A painting is what you make of it, besides which, 'Moon, Weeping' has a better ring to it than 'Paintbrush, Dripping. ~ Robert Breault

I placed the tubes of paint on the palette and selected a small canvas. I prepared the palette with an assortment of colors, then closed my eyes, remembering the way the moors had looked when I rode into town with Lord Livingston. He'd been so different on that drive into the village before he left for London. Had that been the side of him that Lady Anna had fallen in love with? I dipped my brush into the black paint and then mixed in some white until I'd created the right shade of gray, then touched the brush to the canvas. I loved the feeling of the paintbrush in my hand. He'd been kind to buy me the art supplies, but I remembered how he'd behaved in the dining room and at other times before that. 'How could he be so cruel, so unfeeling?'
Once I'd painted the clouds, I moved on to the hills, mixing a sage green color for the grass and then dotting the foreground with a bit of lavender to simulate the heather. I stepped back from the canvas and frowned. It needed something else. But what? I looked out the window to the orchard.
The Middlebury Pink. 'Who took the page from Lady Anna's book? Lord Livingston?' I dabbed my brush into the brown paint and created the structure of the tree. Next I dotted the branches with its heart-shaped leaves and large, white, saucer-size blossoms with pink tips. ~ Sarah Jio

There was a noise out back and Megan stalked to the end of the hall to look out the window. The door to the shed was just closing.
Finn.
He was just as bad as his brother. Finn had stranded her that morning too and he hadn't said a word to her about Spanish class, even though he never would have passed that pop quiz they had taken without her help. Megan turned and stormed down the hallway. Maybe she was too scared to say anything to Evan, but Finn…she was going to give that boy a piece of her mind.
"You guys all suck, you know that?" Megan shouted, flinging open the door to the shed.
Finn dropped his paintbrush on the leg of his jeans, where it left a streak of orange before hitting the dirty floor.
"Sorry?" he said.
"You! You suck!" Megan fumed.
"We've been over this. I know I suck."
"Not your art. You! You…guys!" Megan shouted.
Finn blinked. "Actually, I think I'm kind of an okay guy."
"Oh, please!" Megan said, squaring off in front of him. "I mean, what's wrong with you people? Were you all born like this? Because it's gotta be in your genes. Either that or you've all gotten each other in one too many choke holds over the years and you've deprived your brains of too much oxygen. Which is it?"
"Megan, I think you need to sit down," Finn said, carefully reaching for her shoulders. Keeping her at arm's length, he steered her over to the old bench and pushed her down until she had to let her knees go and fall into the sea ~ Kate Brian

How to Draw a Picture (XII)
Know when you're finished, and when you are, put your pencil or your paintbrush down. All the rest is only life. ~ Stephen King

Writing is an art. A document is your canvas, words are your paint, and a keyboard is your paintbrush. ~ Lizzy Grimm

Director Michelle MacLaren is the John Cage of this malevolent silence, able to wield it as precisely as a pointillist with a paintbrush. And with 'To'hajiilee,' the final episode of Breaking Bad she'll ever direct, she has painted her masterpiece. Under the unblinking eye of her relentless camera, this was television not as entertainment but as endurance. It was agonizing, nauseating, unbearable. I loved every minute but hated every second. I couldn't wait for it to be over but I never wanted it to end. And I especially never wanted it to end like that. ~ Andy Greenwald

I wish slitting the wrist of the clock
would let this moment last forever –
your tongue so deep in my ear
it feels like a paintbrush, coating
the dark, peeling walls inside my head
with a carmine veneer. ~ Jeffrey McDaniel

She can paint a pretty picture but this story has a twist. The paintbrush is a razor and the canvas is her wrist. ~ Amy Efaw