Russell Smith Quotes

I'm irrational about all things creative, and I'm always late!

Every art expression is rooted fundamentally in the personality and temperament of the artist.

I wanted all my life to give my world into other arts - books, plays, movies - but I didn't want to sell out.

I'm creative in my own life. I'm creative when I step out the door. I'm creative when I pick up a glass. Do you know what I mean? I'm one of those dreadful people who probably should have been born at the end of the 19th century and been in cafe society. That would have suited me fine.

My sister's a musician. Everyone else in our family, it's either academics or artists of one kind or another. And those are the people that I think I like to hang out with, too. I think, you know, they're always interesting; they lead interesting lives, and I think they're important for everyone to read about because everyone is an artist in a way.

I don't know why I do what I do. I tend to go for the really weird, bizarre stuff. I actually have to tone it down for the show.

The world isn't all happy, shiny people, and great art doesn't come from vanilla. Great art comes from people with a point of view and are very passionate.

Being a creative person, I want to feel the highs and the lows.

The fact of the matter is that all true artistes are androgynous by nature, the yin and yang perfectly balanced.

I've always enjoyed the bohemia of Paisley.

Marvin Gaye said there's a song inside of me and I can't get it out. And I know it's in there, and I can feel that it's in there, and I can't get it out. There's so much that I want to say, and I haven't been able to figure out how to say it in my art. I can only say it in ham-fisted, clumsy, nonpoetic ways, and I'm trying to figure out how to talk about life and talk about love and talk about pain and trials and tribulation in an artistic form.

That's part of being an artist; you have to be that sensitive.

Painters are noted for being dissipated and wild.

Writers ... I think ... live on that fine line between insanity and genius.

I love vocal music, but I've had a hard time understanding myself through the English language. So it just seemed to me that if I relied solely on creating a voice out of the music, then I might be able to reach something more profound.

A writer or any suffering artist-to-be is just an instrument too finely set to the human condition [...]

We wouldn't be artists, writers, painters, musicians, if we weren't sensitive.

If artists and poets are unhappy, it is after all because happiness does not interest them.

I don't know of a great artist who did not sacrifice and thereby have to wrestle with the depths of loneliness and sadness.

The creative act arises out of the struggle of human beings with and against that which limits them.

Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.

Sometimes people save the best part of themselves for their art.

You'll need to suffer to make any real art.

... maybe that's all anyone who writes or paints or sculpts is doing anyway -- excusing themselves for refusing to live like other people or be like them.