Willa Cather Quotes

Art, it seems to me, doesn't need freedom so much as it needs courage and love - some would call it 'soul' or 'Eros.'

You can only write your own vision.

Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction...All I'm writing is just what I feel, that's all. I just keep it almost naked. And probably the words are so bland...I just hate to be in one corner. I hate to be put as only a guitar player, or either only as a songwriter, or only as a tap dancer. I like to move around...Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.

I really think that if there's any one enemy to human creativity, especially creative writing, it's self-consciousness.

I think a diversity of expression can only be good, so I think the more that people write about their experience, use their imagination to deal with their experience, you know, I think that's going to be good for not only for those authors but also for people who are interested in trying to understand it.

What's interesting about writing is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself is a yawn.

Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.

If you're actually allowing your creative part to control your writing rather than a more commercial instinct or motive, then you'll find that all sorts of interesting things will bubble up to the surface.

Readers would email me and say, 'Please write a novel about so-and-so,' but it has to come from yourself and not so much from your readership.

I suppose an artist takes the elements of his life and rearranges them and then has them perceived by others as though they were the elements of their lives.

'Birdman' came from a very beautiful side of me, from a part of honesty and surrender about things.

My best days do seem like a distillation of all that was best about school. Write a story! Paint a picture! Write a poem! Make a print!

No thesaurus can give you those words, no rhyming dictionary. They must happen out of you.

I prefer writing originals.

Anything that I write comes from the soul.

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

To create something you must be something.

Let me read you some of my poetry. My poetry just takes me to another level.

I seem most instinctively to believe in the human value of creative writing, whether in the form of verse or fiction, as a mode of truth-telling, self-expression and homage to the twin miracles of creation and consciousness.

I feel, as an artist, I should be able to express who I am and the things I come from, and the places I want to also be.

I don't want ever to be guilty of what my critics claim: doing formula without original elements.

Some music comes from a real place; some music comes from your imagination. It's difficult to find out what's real and what's not, especially with the gangster stuff.

If I were to have a dream job, it would probably be a poet. Then again, I don't think I'm a very good poet!

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

I think of art as the highest level of creativity. To me, it is one of the greatest sources of enjoyment.