Anna Deavere Smith Quotes

Painting is not for me either decorative amusement, or the plastic invention of felt reality; it must be every time: invention, discovery, revelation.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

In any art, you don't know in advance what you want to say - it's revealed to you as you say it. That's the difference between art and illustration.

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.

Art has always been and is in its very essence the boldest departure from nature. It is the bridge into the spirit world.

Creators, makers of the new, can never become obsolete, for in the arts there is no correct answer. The story of discoverers could be told in simple chronological order, since the latest science replaces what went before. But the arts are another story- a story of infinite addition. We must find order in the random flexings of the imagination.

I really feel that artists or musicians are controversial people. Controversy is part of the nature of art and creativity. If people are not doing that, they're not artists - they're artisans.

Art = a mad search for individualism.

In art, one does not aim for simplicity; one achieves it unintentionally as one gets closer to the real meaning of things.

Art is partly communication, but only partly. The rest is discovery.

Sure, I can talk like you, but I choose not to, It's like an art, you know? Picasso had to prove to the world he could paint the right way, before he goes putting both eyes on the side of a face... See if you paint wrong because that's the best you can do, you just a chump. But you do it because you want to? Then you're an artist...You can take that to the grave and dig it up when you need it.

Art keeps one young, I think, because it keeps one perpetually a beginner, perpetually a child.

Art is craft: all art is always and essentially a work of craft: but in the true work of art, before the craft and after it, is some essential durable core of being, which is what the craft works on, and shows, and sets free. The statue in the stone. How does the artist find that, see it, before it's visible? That is a real question.

There is nothing new in art except talent.

He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise.

When you're an artist, all you're trying to do is self-express.

Art revolves around creating something that isn't there.

I always want to do something I haven't done before and get to work with other actors, writers, or directors that I want to work with.

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

I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

I love to get to that place where I don't know what kind of music I'm doing; I don't know if it's any good. I don't know if it's anything. It's a big question mark. The idea is to have interesting results. That's my bottom line.

Art doesn't just happen by accident. It is about pulling out new tricks and trying new things.

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.