Robert Hughes Quotes

Why do writers, say, give up a job in economics and decide to write poetry? Or, why do they give up a job in a bank and decide to paint, like Krishan Khanna? They want to convey something.

I don't paint to live, I live to paint.

More than anything, that's been the thread through my life - the desire to write, the impulse to write. I mean, it's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing.

Having started out in theatre, I feel an impulse to do it as much as I can.

When I get an artistic itch, I have to scratch it.

I think it all comes from the same source, really, the writing of music, the writing of words, the playing of music. It's what drives anyone to be interested in the arts. I think it's a poetic gene; it's a wanting to go beyond.

Me wanting to be an artist never really faded away. I knew that no matter what else I tried to pursue, my passion was always that.

Art was always my thing. I had an art scholarship before I had a football scholarship. I'm a left-handed, right-brained, painting-drawing guy. That was always my skill.

I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result, and when I have a bad time come over me it is a stronger desire than ever.

It does not in the least concern me whether I shall have at the end of my life thirty people who understand or three hundred. I am like an artist who paints a picture because he must, otherwise he is unhappy - not unhappy, but he must obey that creative impulse.

The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell.

I know for sure that I have an instinct for color, and that it will come to me more and more, that painting is in the very marrow of my bones.

In matters like writing and painting, a man does what he has to do - if he has to write, why then, he writes; and if he doesn't feel the urgent need of writing, there are dozens of professions in which it is easier to earn a comfortable living.

I understand wanting to do your craft. I understand wanting to have a passion for your art and for your ability to be an actor, to be a singer, to be a dancer - that I understand. Wanting to be famous - I don't get that. But that's where we're living right now.

The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul.

It took me twenty years to discover painting: twenty years looking at nature, and above all, going to the Louvre.

To feed your Muse, then, you should always have been hungry about life since you were a child. If not, it is a little late to start.

I've been drawing all my life, just as a hobby, without really having shows or anything. It's just an agreeable thing to do, and I recommend it to everybody.

You must have the devil in you to succeed in the arts.

I always wonder what drives us as Artists.

Photography's like this baby that needs to be fed all the time. It's always hungry.

A passion for his art, and an eager desire to excel, will more than supply an artist with the place of method.

I have no desire to prove anything by my work. I have never used it as an outlet or as a means of expressing myself. I just dance.

That's the difference between the serious artist and the craftsman--the craftsman can take material and because of his abilities do a professional job of it. The serious artist, like Proust, is like an object caught by a wave and swept to shore. He's obsessed by his material; it's like a venom working in his blood and the art is the antidote.

The writer is a writer because he cannot help it. It is a compulsion.