Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

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

When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something.

Imagination is the beginning of creation.

An artist must have imagination. An artist who does not use his imagination is a mechanic.

Art revolves around creating something that isn't there.

I'm a creator at heart.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

Stay loyal to your creativity because it's a gift.

All the things an artist must be: poet, explorer of nature, philosopher!

As an aspiring artist, you should strive for originality of vision. Have something to say and a fresh way of saying it. No story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it’s not the work of the imagination.

Artists aren't looking for you to write them something; they're looking for you to give them something new.

It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.

I think artists can go to a level of vision that can often save us from a situation which seems to have no solution whatsoever.

To be an artist, you have to nurture the things that most people discard.

an artist is always seeking revelation.

A great artist ... takes what he did not make and makes of it something that only he can make.

Vision gives you the impulse to make the picture your own.

True dreams and visions should be as visible to the artist as the phenomena of the objective world.

The Man of Genius may at the same time be, indeed is commonly, an Artist, but the two are not to be confounded. The Man of Genius,referred to mankind, is an originator, an inspired or demonic man, who produces a perfect work in obedience to laws yet unexplored. The artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected. There has been no man of pure Genius, as there has been none wholly destitute of Genius.

A picture is first of all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy.

A director is a man, therefore he has ideas; he is also an artist, therefore he has imagination. Whether they are good or bad, it seems to me that I have an abundance of stories to tell. And the things I see, the things that happen to me, continually renew the supply.

Faith is almost the bottom line of creativity; it requires a leap of faith any time we undertake a creative endeavor, whether this is going to the easel, or the page, or onto the stage - or for that matter, in a homelier way, picking out the right fabric for the kitchen curtains, which is also a creative act.

He lives with his creativity in high gear.

It is the function of creative man to perceive and to connect the seemingly unconnected.

Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.