Robert Henri Quotes

Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard. What you’ve really got to do is focus on learning as much about life, and about various aspects of it first.

Genius gives birth, talent delivers. What Rembrandt or Van Gogh saw in the night can never be seen again.

The hallmark of an artist is generosity.

Not that painting would have been a release. The reason for doing it is the desire to create. I've got to do it! I've seen that, I can still remember it, I've got to paint it.

I start a picture and I finish it.

I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere.

From time immemorial artistic insights have been revealed to artists in their sleep and in dreams, so that at all times they ardently desired them.

No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.

Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything.

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

I can concentrate on my art.

Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing - then a work of art may happen.

The landscape painter must walk in the fields with a humble mind. No arrogant man was ever permitted to see Nature in all her beauty.

There's no writer's block; there's only distraction.

Maybe some people, when they sit down to write their great novel or make their great record or paint their great painting, they have it all planned out in their head. But for me, it's never worked that way.

I consider myself first of all an artist. My work is about my creativity - why I create and not for whom.

Making a record and being a touring artist is about cooperation between spirit, craft, emotion, and focus.

Life and art are inseparable.

I get inspired by the sounds that evoke an emotion from me. That's what I am drawn to; that's what turns me on.

What I learned from Beyonce is just the focus, the drive, and to stay creative and to always give, just keep giving. Throughout the years that she's been doing it, since Destiny's Child to now, she's been giving.

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

To make art you need to be inspired.

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

The subject gives you the best idea of how to make a photograph. So I just wait for something to happen.

It's a funny thing with the inspiration thing. There's always loads of music around that I absolutely love and films going back to when I started making film music in the mid-80's.