Charles M. Schulz Quotes

Realism can break a writer's heart.

The artistic life is a long, lovely suicide.

People who paint, including myself, get to a point where a bit of angst comes in. If you're doing it for a living, it's worth it to suffer those slings and arrows.

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

I've never made any picture, good or bad, without paying for it in emotional turmoil.

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

Each work seems to give me the most trouble at the time I'm working on it.

Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist.

I'm very personal with my music, and it takes a piece of your heart away every time you record that in the studio. So you only have so many pieces of your heart to give away.

Poor artist! You gave away part of your soul when you painted the picture which you are now trying to dispose of.

It's always nice to have people love the things that you do. But it's a lot of hard work, and people are always passionate, if it's family fare or a drama, it's the same amount of work and people invest everything into that, and when it doesn't come out the way you want it to, of course it's hurtful.

Musicians have to suffer to a certain degree in order to obtain their outlet.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.

Songwriting is Hell on Earth. If it isn't, then you're doing it wrong.

It is not for nothing that artists have called their works the children of their brains and likened the pains of production to the pains of childbirth.

No flower of art ever fully blossomed save it was nourished by tears of agony.

There's way too much pain in this business for anyone who doesn't HAVE to write.

It is horrible to sit in front of the keyboard and write those scenes because you're losing too. You lose somebody you enjoy working with.

The style, which is something I take to heart, is getting on my nerves horribly. It frustrates and torments me. I have days when Iam sick about it and nights when it gives me a fever. The more I go at it the more I find myself incapable of conveying the Idea.

If you study a great work of art, you'll probably find the artist was a kind of genius. And geniuses are different to you and me. So let's have no talk of temperamental, self-absorbed and petulant babies. Being a good artist is the toughest job you could pick, and you have to be a little nuts to take it on. I love them all.

Formerly I believed books were made like this: a poet came, lightly opened his lips, and the inspired fool burst into song – if you please! But it seems, before they can launch a song, poets must tramp for days with callused feet, and the sluggish fish of the imagination flounders softly in the slush of the heart. And while, with twittering rhymes, they boil a broth of loves and nightingales, the tongueless street merely writhes for lack of something to shout or say

Every artist is a cannibal/every poet is a thief/all kill for inspiration/and then sing about the grief.

It does feel great to be writing, but the process is sometimes excruciating.

I think I'd rather have my heart broke than do the breaking. —Lena

Painting is like having a bad mistress who spends and spends and it's never enough ... I tell myself that even if a tolerable study comes out of it from time to time, it would have been cheaper to buy it from somebody else.