Writing Art Quotes

Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing. ~ Ben Hecht

Writing is the process of making my soul tangible on paper. ~ Me

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice. ~ Cyril Connolly

If there is no mystery, for the artist, to solve inside of his art, then there's no point in it ... for me, every act of art is the act of solving a mystery. ~ Truman Capote

It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Writing is the only art form where a good number of the artists make a slice of their living criticizing one another in print, in public. ~ Christian Bauman

To all you writers, artists, musicians, creative types who want to give up: It's okay to walk away for a bit. Get your second wind. But your writing, art, music will be there, lurking over your shoulder, and it will call to you, and you will answer. And come back even stronger."
― Kathleen M. Rodgers ~ Kathleen M. Rodgers

I'm very interested in the materiality of language. I wonder if, perhaps, this comes from my background in the visual arts. I was a potter for a number of years and earned a BFA in art before going to graduate school for creative writing. ~ Anna Journey

If you feel the need to do it - to write, or paint, or take photos or anything - then that's what you have to do. That's the one most important thing you can do. Because if you don't, then there isn't any point to anything, right? You've got to do it. You've got to keep writing. ~ Kacen Callender

We all know that the great memories of our childhood are the little triumphs - it doesn't really matter whether that was in writing, art, on the hockey field or on the football field. It's something that makes you feel - 'I can do this stuff.' ~ Michael Morpurgo

No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity. ~ Julia Cameron

The most important thing about writing a book is having book parties. ~ Art Buchwald

We fret about words, we writers. Words mean. Words point. They are arrows. Arrows stuck in the rough hide of reality. And the more portentous, more general the word, the more they also resemble rooms or tunnels. They can expand, or cave in. They can come to be filled with a bad smell. They will often remind us of other rooms, where we'd rather dwell or where we think we are already living. They can be spaces we lose the art or the wisdom of inhabiting. And eventually those volumes of mental intention we no longer know how to inhabit, will be abandoned, boarded up, closed down. ~ Susan Sontag

Every work of art is aggressive, Isabella. And every artist's life is a small war or a large one, beginning with oneself and one's limitations. To achieve anything you must first have ambition and then talent, knowledge, and finally the opportunity. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

It's possible I am the only art critic that a lot of people read. And maybe Robert Hughes, if he's still writing. ~ Peter Schjeldahl

Unpraised, I find it hard to start writing in the morning; but the dejection lasts only 30 minutes, and once I start I forget all about it. One should aim, seriously, at disregarding ups and downs; a compliment here, a silence there;[ ... ] the central fact remains stable, which is the fact of my own pleasure in the art. ~ Virginia Woolf

A script arrived, and on the front cover - scrawled really big, as if it were a book report - is 'Django Unchained, written by Quentin Tarantino.' And I thought, 'Well, no art department came up with this; this is Quentin's writing.' ~ Dennis Christopher

Use the creative process - singing, writing, art, dance, whatever - to get to know yourself better. ~ Catie Curtis

Never get too attached to the first draft of anything – this includes writing, art, homes, love. You will revise and revise and revise. We are always in the midst of our own becoming. ~ Jeanette LeBlanc

when you are struggling
in your
writing (art)
it usually means
you
are hearing one thing.
but writing (creating) another.

- honest | risk ~ Nayyirah Waheed

In the rare moments I permitted any stillness, I noted a small fluttering at the pit of my belly, a barely perceptible disturbance. The faint whisper of a word would sound in my head: writing. At first I could not say whether it was heartburn or inspiration. The more I listened, the louder the message became: I needed to write, to express myself through written language not only so that others might hear me but so that I could hear myself. The gods, we are taught, created humankind in their own image. Everyone has an urge to create. Its expression may flow through many channels: through writing, art, or music or through the inventiveness of work or in any number of ways unique to all of us, whether it be cooking, gardening, or the art of social discourse. The point is to honor the urge. To do so is healing for ourselves and for others; not to do so deadens our bodies and our spirits. When I did not write, I suffocated in silence. ~ Gabor Mate

The novel is perhaps the highest art form because it so closely resembles life: it is about human relationships. It's technique, page by page, resembles our technique of living day by day
a way of relating. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

I like to be aware of a book as a piece of writing, and aware of its structure as a product of mind, and yet I want to be able to see the represented world through it. I admire artists who succeed in dividing my attention more or less evenly between the world of their books and the art of their books ... so that a reader may study the work with pleasure as well as the world that it describes. ~ Annie Dillard

Just when you think there's nothing to write about, Nixon says, 'I am not a crook.' Jimmy Carter says, 'I have lusted after women in my heart.' President Reagan says, 'I have just taken a urinalysis test, and I am not on dope. ~ Art Buchwald

Writing about art is only useful when it leads to the experience of art. ~ Walter Darby Bannard

That is what the title of artist means: one who perceives more than his fellows, and who records more than he has seen. ~ Edward Gordon Craig

There is a lot of catarsis that passes itself off as art or comedy and I'm kind of critical of that. I think that just because you bare your soul or underwear or private moments it doesn't , or necessarily make for entertainment, or good writing, or funny writing. ~ Mindy Kaling

I write best when "I" am not writing. ~ Girish Kohli

When you're actually making a film, it's just people on your back all the time wanting stuff and you're constantly having to it deal with them. It's probably the most time consuming of all the arts, but I do love it because it is a great mix of visual art and music and writing. ~ Taika Waititi

Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality. ~ John Gardner

No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published. ~ Russell Lynes

What is creativity and what is writing, art, and music? Creativity is the idea and its fulfillment comes when we put the idea into practice. Of course both are needed, but the great artists are best at the second part. ~ Michael J. Mitchell

Loneliness sometimes gives me a quantity of creativeness - you're drinking another glass of wine and you're feeling even worse. Art doesn't work without pain; art also exists for compensating pain. ~ Till Lindemann

It is the fate of most men who mingle with the world, and attain even the prime of life, to make many real friends, and lose them in the course of nature. It is the fate of all authors or chroniclers to create imaginary friends, and lose them in the course of art. Nor is this the full extent of their misfortunes; for they are required to furnish an account of them besides. ~ Charles Dickens

Now and then there are readings that make the hairs on the neck, the non-existent pelt, stand on end and tremble, when every word burns and shines hard and clear and infinite and exact, like stones of fire, like points of stars in the dark - readings when the knowledge that we shall know the writing differently or better or satisfactorily, runs ahead of any capacity to say what we know, or how. In these readings, a sense that the text has appeared to be wholly new, never before seen, is followed, almost immediately, by the sense that it was always there, that we the readers, knew it was always there, and have always known it was as it was, though we have now for the first time recognised, become fully cognisant of, our knowledge. ~ A.S. Byatt

I think writing is the most underrated thing in Hollywood. ~ Michael Pena

AT ANOTHER LOCATION, WE FOUND BARRELS OF CHEMICAL material that was intended for use as biochemical weapons. Everyone talks about there being no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but they seem to be referring to completed nuclear bombs, not the many deadly chemical weapons or precursors that Saddam had stockpiled. Maybe the reason is that the writing on the barrels showed that the chemicals came from France and Germany, our supposed Western allies. The thing I always wonder about is how much Saddam was able to hide before we actually invaded. We'd given so much warning before we came in, that he surely had time to move and bury tons of material. Where it went, where it will turn up, what it will poison - I think those are pretty good questions that have never been answered. ~ Chris Kyle

There is a door we all want to walk through, and writing can help you find it and open it. ~ Anonymous

If I can write it, I can cope. And I've been writing many books, but in every book, I try to explore something in my own soul that I need to solve, I need to understand. ~ Isabel Allende

Writing is the silence of the soul struggling to be heard ~ GBickle

I didn't get into writing to make money or get famous or any of that. I got into it to hit hearts, and man, when I get letters not just from the soldiers but from their kids, especially their kids, it makes it all worthwhile. ~ Tim O'Brien

You took a pretty picture and you smashed it into bits, sank me into blackness and you sealed it with a kiss. ~ Madonna Ciccone

Don't underestimate this gift of finding a place in the writing world: if you really work at describing creatively on paper the truth as you understand it, as you have experienced it, with the people or material who are in you, who are asking that you help them get written, you will come to a secret feeling of honor. ~ Anne Lamott

Speaking as a writer, I'm not interested in trends, I want to write books that are honest, with characters as true to the inner world of the story as I can make them. ~ Susan Patron

But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer "writer" for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer "poetry" would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry. ~ W. H. Auden

I'd rather work on my radio show, which no one hears but I put about eight hours of programming and writing into it for those 30 people who do tune in. ~ Henry Rollins

All one needs to write a story is one feeling and four walls. ~ Doris Betts

Bob Dylan may be the Charlie Chaplin of rock n' roll. Both men are regarded as geniuses by their entire audience. Both were proclaimed revolutionaries for their early work and subjected to exhaustive attack when later works were thought to be inferior. Both developed their art without so much as a nodding glance toward their peers. ~ Jon Landau

I'm also interested in creating a lasting legacy for collectors because bronze will last for thousands of years so I'm not really selling the art to this particular collector but it is being passed on. ~ Richard MacDonald

I don't really have those kinds of intentions when I write a scene. I try to follow the internal logic of the fiction, rather than make an argument or an assertion. ~ Rachel Kushner

The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it. ~ Banksy

There is a deep question whether the possible meanings that emerge from an effort to explain the experience of art may not mask the real meanings of a work of art. ~ Jerome Bruner

I tried acting and all of the arts, I even put out a record album, but what I like the most is business. ~ Beverly Johnson

The art of being helpful is behaving as if everything we do matters - because we never know which things might. ~ Gloria Steinem

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us. ~ Martin Luther

Music was never just a hobby for me. I'd pick up a guitar every day to work on whatever I was writing at the time. I would put my ideas in songs the way some people might put them in diaries or journals. ~ Tracy Chapman

Perhaps then one reason why we have no great poet, novelist or critic writing today is that we refuse to allow words their liberty. We pin them down to one meaning, their useful meaning: the meaning which makes us catch the train, the meaning which makes us pass the examination. ~ Virginia Woolf

The more practice you have, the less stressful writing is. ~ Edwidge Danticat

Taken thus by surprise, it was several moments before she was able to decide whether to make herself known to him, or to await a formal introduction. The strict propriety in which she had been reared urged her to adopt the latter course; then she remembered that she was not a young girl any longer, but a guardian-aunt ... To flinch before what would certainly be an extremely disagreeable interview would be the act, she told herself, of a pudding-heart. Bracing herself resolutely, she got up from the writing-table, and turned, saying, in a cool, pleasant tone: 'Mr Calverleigh?'
He had picked up a newspaper from the table in the centre of the room, and was glancing through it, but he lowered it, and looked enquiringly across at her. His eyes, which were deep-set and of a light grey made the more striking by the swarthiness of his complexion, held an expression of faint surprise; he said: 'Yes? ~ Georgette Heyer

Writing is my only interest. Even speaking is an interruption. ~ Isaac Asimov

Art is sacred.
Punk rock is freedom.
Expression and right to express is vital.
Anyone can be artistic. ~ Kurt Cobain

I think as soon as I figured out - and this must have been incredibly young - that comic books were made by humans, rather than being natural phenomenon likes trees or rocks, I just wanted to be one of the people who did that. So I was copying all kinds of cartoons that I was reading, comic books, and eventually learned how to draw cartoon books step-by-step and just, I don't know, I'm not an especially quick learner, but I sure was a dedicated one. ~ Art Spiegelman

The idea of the writer who writes nineteen novels, with various ups and downs and levels of experimentation, isn't around so much now. There's a focus, I think, on fewer books, with more pressure on each book to succeed. With that there comes, I think, a certain pressure towards shapeliness in fiction. Towards neatness. And I think writers feel that, and it can effect how they write. ~ Chad Harbach

Love is an act of art ... It is this creative quality of love, that it seeks to reshape the world for its sake and to create happiness, which makes love radical and potentially seditious ... the inverse is also true: art is an act of love. ~ Rod Dubey

You write your name in the snow Yet say nothing. ~ Voltaire

If you want help in starting to write memoirs, you don't want to fall into the clutches of a famous writer who has been hired to teach at a writing workshop solely because of his name's ability to attract students, rather than because of any teaching skill. You should not have to grapple with someone who secretly thinks you should be writing about his life rather than your own. ~ Judith Barrington

There is a story in Zen circles about a man and a horse. The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the man on the horse is going somewhere important. Another man, standing alongside the road, shouts, "Where are you going?"and the first man replies, "I don't know! Ask the horse!" This is also our story. We are riding a horse, we don't know where we are going, and we can't stop. The horse is our habit energy pulling us along, and we are powerless. We are always running,and it has become a habit. We struggle all the time, even during our sleep. We are at war within ourselves, and we can easily start a war with others. We have to learn the art of stopping. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

When I use people I know, all of my instincts seem to go dead, and if I'm getting anywhere near myself then I can't do it. It's actually a real weakness! I hate writing personal essays, I don't think I'm especially good at it. I like just encountering [my characters], discovering them. I love the escape of just being surrounded by all these people who are nothing like people I know. But I don't find it hard to be in the middle of a different life, with a different set of habits and way of thinking and talking. That seems to come easily to me. ~ Jennifer Egan

That race you feel you are a part of is happening only in your mind. ~ Ryron Gracie

Every child is simple, just a clean slate. Then the parents start writing on his slate - what he has to become. Then the teachers, the priests, the leaders - they all go on emphasizing that you have to become somebody; otherwise, you have wasted your life. Just the opposite is the case. You are a being. You need not become anybody else. That is the meaning of simplicity: remaining at ease with one's being, and not going on any track of becoming - which is unending. ~ Rajneesh

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

trying to convince myself
i am allowed
to take up space
is like writing with
my left hand
when i was born
to use my right

-the idea shrinking is hereditary ~ Rupi Kaur

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, fellow members of the motion picture industry and honored guests: This is one of the happiest moments of my life, and I want to thank each one of you who had a part in selecting me for one of their awards, for your kindness. It has made me feel very, very humble; and I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything that I may be able to do in the future. I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry. My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel, and may I say thank you and God bless you. ~ Hattie McDaniel

I'm so happy to be around people. I just really like people, and being a freelancer can be lonely during the day, when you're at home trying to write anything you can. ~ Kristen Schaal

In my writing, I'm often describing a universal situation. A situation in which human beings often choose to violate each other. Sometimes I happen to explore that in terms of the black/white dynamic. Generally, a white person does not like me to say, or does not like to be told, "You know, what you did was incredibly wrong." ~ Jamaica Kincaid

We use rituals in our Moon Circle in order to set the evening apart as a sacred space. We use it to recentre ourselves, to allow crashing thoughts to melt away. Like music and art, rituals can open our hearts to new possibilities. They allow us to see with a fresh clarity, and bring us to a space of liminality. Liminal space is what we feel when we see a stunning sunset and the world around us drops away. It's when we hear a new song and begin crying at the traffic lights. It's the quiet of Christmas Eve, when everything is done and all the family is asleep, and your mind grows still and full of gladness. ~ Lucy AitkenRead