Robert Bly Quotes

All artists are self-sacrificing human beings, and to become an artist is nothing but to devote oneself to the subterranean gods.

Art is a vocation, as much as anything in this world. For the real artist, it is the most natural thing in the world, not as necessary as air and water, perhaps, but as food and water. But we really do lead almost a monastic life, you know; to follow it you very often have to give up something.

The art is more important than the artist. The work is more important than the person who does it. You must be prepared to sacrifice all the you could possibly have, be, or do; you must be willing to go all the way for your art. If it is a question between choosing between your life and a work of art -- any work of art -- your decision is made for you.

You can write nothing of value unless you give yourself wholly to the the theme -- and when you so give yourself -- you lose appetite ans sleep -- it cannot be helped --

Is art really the priesthood that demands the pure in heart who belong to it wholly?

If it is the mark of the artist to love art before everything, to renounce everything for its sake, to think all the sweet human things of life well lost if only he may attain something, do some good, great work - then I was never an artist.

I always think that art is a form of sacrifice.

I was really serious about painting, so I could never be a Sunday painter. You can't just switch it on and off.

Make some sacrifice for your art and you will be repaid, but ask of art to sacrifice herself for you and a bitter disappointment may come to you.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

If anything in your life is more important than writing - anything at all - you should walk away now while you still can. Forewarned is forearmed. For those who cannot or will not walk away, you need only to remember this. Writing is life. Breathe deeply of it.

Talent must be a fanatical mistress. She's beautiful; when you're with her, people watch you, they notice. But she bangs on your door at odd hours, and she disappears for long stretches, and she has no patience for the rest of your existence; your wife, your children, your friends. She is the most thrilling evening of your week, but some day she will leave you for good. One night, after she's been gone for years, you will see her on the arm of a younger man, and she will pretend not to recognize you.

I gave my genius to my life, but my talent to my art.

When you decide to become an opera singer, it's a commitment that allows nothing else to interfere. Even your family - and I have a young daughter - has to take second place.

The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews.

An artist who dedicates his life to art, burdens his art with his life, and his life with his art.

One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one's own flesh in the inkpot, each time one dips one's pen.

It's certainly true that when I was young, writing seemed to me so important that I would have sacrificed almost anything to it ... Because I thought of the world in which I wrote -- the world I created -- as somehow much more enormously alive than the world I was actually living in.

You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls .

The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

A true artist is practically married to his or her art form so I just couldn't turn my back on it.

The truth is, anyone who puts so much of herself and her life into art as you do must naturally fear any failure in that art as a potential threat to your life. And so you protect your art more than you protect your health or the common forms of happiness the rest of us have. And you probably have this in common with every artist you admire.

It doesn't take much to be a successful artist-all you need to do is dedicate your entire life to it.

I want to be able to write, that's my first love and I don't want to deviate from it even though I probably could have made a lot more money.

You have to give your art everything you can - I don't mean only writing, but studying other poets and poetics, thinking, reading what poets have written other than their poetry.