Wassily Kandinsky Quotes

It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.

Literature is achieved anxiety.

A canvas is never empty.

I think I've always been afraid of painting, really. Right from the beginning. All my paintings are about painting without a painter. Like a kind of mechanical form of painting.

For me, there has always been a disconnect with the sort of elitist structure of the high-art world - and my distaste for that is at odds with my feeling that art should aspire to do great things.

An empty canvas is full.

Further, for once, I like the idea that people who think I'm a constant voice for the furthering of the imagination have to see that interest in a more materialistic fashion.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

An empty canvas is a living wonder... far lovelier than certain pictures.

It is almost impossible to reconcile self expression with the creative act.

When someone gets passed that mic, and they know deep down inside that they wanna say something or sing something or produce something, but they don't do that, it's like killing your musical life.

Blank paper always symbolizes the anxiety of the painter.

A lot of the music comes out of that conflict of wanting this other thing and feeling guilty about wanting it, and then it guiding me somewhere despite my kicking and screaming.

An empty canvas, apparently really empty, that says nothing and is without significance – almost dull, in fact – in reality, is crammed with thousands of undertone tensions and full of expectancy. Slightly apprehensive lest it should be outraged.

I know that without treatment I would not have never been able to harness my creativity in such a successful way.

To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices.

When I have fears that I may ceace to be, Before my pen has gleaned my teaming brain".

Seeds, there are seeds enough which need only be stirred in with the soil where they lie, by an inspired voice or pen, to bear fruit of a divine flavor.

Spiritually I am wherever my spirit allows me to be, and that is not necessarily in the future... Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure.

A painter's got a canvas. The writer's got reams of empty paper. A musician has silence.

I’m torn between the desire to create and the desire to destroy.

The soul is like a violin string: it makes music only when it is stretched.

We write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience. We paint those qualities which we do not posses.

If you're really going to uncover something as an artist, you're going to come into access with parts of your personality and your psyche that are really uncomfortable to face: your own ambition, your own greed, your own avarice, your own jealousies, and anything that would get in the way of the purity of your own artistic voice.

My whole life has been a twenty years struggle between poetry and prose, or, if you like to call it so, Music and Law.