Ned Rorem Quotes

I always wonder what drives us as Artists.

Art is something you can't teach, but you can inspire it.

Every mind which has given itself to self-expression in art is aware of a directing agency outside its conscious control which it has agreed to label 'inspiration'.

I really admire songwriters or any kind of writer, painter or artist that says, "I'm going to get up at 8 o'clock in the morning and spend this time to this time creating." I do that sometimes, but the songs I like the best come as gifts from somewhere. It's almost like you didn't do anything, like you can't take credit for it because you sat down and the melody and words came out.

The definition of inspire is 'to fill with the urge or ability to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.' There you have it: Jeffrey Bilhuber inspires me. I watch him make his magic, and I want to do the same. Those are always my favorite people, the ones who are so alive in the practice of their art that I want to jump in and join the fun.

People write because it seems like it'll be an easier job than carpet laying, that they might meet more girls. And they write because the world strikes them as being a marvelous place, and they want to keep bringing that to everybody's attention. You know ~ a scary place, a menacing place, an exciting place because it's scary and menacing. But mainly, kind of glorious.

Art was always a means to an end with me. You get an idea, and you just can't wait. Once you've started, then you're in there with the punches flying. There's plenty of trouble, but you can handle it. You can't back out. It gets you down once in a while, but it's exciting. Our whole business is exciting.

Angel and Muse approach from without; the Angel sheds light and the Muse gives form (Hesiod learned of them). Gold leaf or chiton-folds: the poet finds his models in his laurel coppice. But the Duende, on the other hand, must come to life in the nethermost recesses of the blood.

In the beginning, there was a kind of energy that - like an urgency to express myself, and the songs just couldn't be held in. But I think it changes, the nature of how that - what that energy is. And I need to court the muse in a much more serious way.

I think I have always had a pretty strong creative impulse. And that has probably saved me from abandoning myself completely.

When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come.'

I wake up in the morning, or the middle of the night when an idea comes through. My songwriting style, basically I just write down information given to me from the muse and how that works for songwriters. Record the muse and the muse delivers.

Every good picture leaves the painter eager to start again, unsatisfied, inspired by the rich mine in which he is working, hoping for more energy, more vitality, more time - condemned to painting for life.

Human requirements are the inspiration for art.

It's hard to predict and to say what goes on inside the minds of an artist, but that's what makes them an artist. That sense of creativity. That thing that makes them tick is probably the very thing that pushes them to the extremes that sometimes can cause, you know, fatalities and things that, you know, that end up not being good.

Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.

I cannot live without art: it excites me, it challenges me, and it leads me to the next thing.

I started producing work with an ecstatic addiction.

I've never been able to understand where great artists come from.

The model should only serve the very private function for the painter of providing the starting point for his excitement.

The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.

Creation is a drug I can't do without.

A secondhand wardrobe hand clothes doesn't make one an artist. Neither do a hair-trigger temper, melancholic nature, propensity for tears, hating your parents, or HIV. I hate to say it - none of these make one an artist. They can help, but just as being gay doesn't make one witty... the only thing that makes one an artist is making art.

Even at your best, the creative moments are still kind of fleeting.

The songs I've written that are the strongest, I'm like: 'I don't know where that came from. It just kind of popped out.' You feel you can't take a whole lot of credit for it. I didn't purposefully will it into existence.