Paul Valery Quotes

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

The little dissatisfaction which every artist feels at the completion of a work forms the germ of a new work.

Books and movies are never finished, only surrendered.

Art is never finished. It is only abandoned.

Perhaps I might be satisfied, momentarily, with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind.

Art has been good for my soul. And it's been good for my brain. I think I'm a better painter now than I was a musician growing up. You struggle to see things and translate an image through your hands to a canvas.

It's absurd to talk about paintings that you haven't finished.

Art is something in which you are never an expert at any point of time. It's something you hone all the time and something which is elusive all the time.

I do not repudiate any of my paintings but there isn't one of them that I would not redo differently, if I had it to redo. My destination is always the same but I work out a different route to get there.

I am just beginning to understand what it is to paint. A painter should have two lives, one in which to learn, and one in which to practice his art.

In reality, however, an artist is a product of art

I've always felt that there's a point where a piece seems to be alive, that is, living. And that's the point where I know the composition is finished.

In life we try to grow and better ourselves. As an artist, I feel like I've grown tremendously.

I think it's natural for an artist to explore as they evolve.

I don't really have a historical overview of my work at all. I'm not an art historian. I don't see that there's this period and that period.

The ultimate point of a piece for me is that it drives the next one. Does it open new doors? That's the success of a piece.

I think the act of condensing months or years of work down to a couple hours of entertainment is pretty wild and extremely rewarding.

When I was a young artist, and I would go look at other artists' career retrospectives, and I was often disappointed with the lack of story line... What was missing to me was the story of where the artist came from and how they got to where they were.

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

There is nothing deeper than to work for a year with the same artist.

I think, like any artist, those baby songs are not the best things you've ever written, but they count because they're you're first attempts at creating art and expressing yourself.

There's no greatest moment in the arts. It's a life, it's a continuity thing. You can't have a great moment because it's spiritual. It's a belief, it's a calling. If you're an artist, doing your own thing on your own, it's while you're doing it that counts. It's a process. If you get too elated, you can get too depressed.

I can't imagine anybody who ends up being an artist who didn't pass through a time of geekiness.

Many appreciate in my former work just what I did not want to express, but which was produced by an incapacity to express what I wanted to express - dynamic movement in equilibrium. But a continuous struggle for this statement brought me nearer. This is what I am attempting in 'Victory Boogie Woogie.'

Every painting I do is related to the last one: it may be a continuation of a previous painting or it may be a reaction against it.