Daniel Clowes Quotes

I can't bear to finish things, beyond a certain point they get heavy. There's something so dead about a finished painting.

It is easy to have a lot of paintings or projects hanging around that are 'almost done.'

I'm not very prolific. I'm not good at sitting down as an artist and saying 'Okay, I need to put in my four hours today.'

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

The hardest part for me is to finish a track. I start new projects all the time.

It's easier and sociabler to talk technique than it is to make art.

I drew pictures rapidly and with few lines, because I had to write most of the pieces, too, and couldn't monkey long with the drawings. The divine urge was no higher than that.

In the same way, I can wake up with a very positive idea of what I want to do for my collection, and be completely desperate at night regarding the same thing. And I do a lot of other things too: Writing for me is almost as important as drawing my collection.

I find drawing a useful outlet for ideas for which there is not time enough to realize as sculpture... And I sometimes draw just for its own enjoyment.

I'm often wary of using the word 'inspiration' to introduce my work -- it sounds too much like a sun shower from the heavens, absorbed by a passive individual enjoying an especially receptive moment. While that may be the case on rare occasions, the reality is usually far more prosaic. Staring at a blank piece of paper, I can't think of anything original. I feel utterly uninspired and unreceptive. It's the familiar malaise of 'artist's block' and in such circumstances there is only one thing to do: just start drawing.

For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.

When I got my first loft, I still didn't know what I was going to paint... There were long stretches when I just sat there and thought without interruption.

For me, drawing is a way of navigating the imagination, and it remains the fundamental vehicle of my practice. Drawing allows me to be at my most inventive.

You never make it, especially in this industry where you constantly churn out stuff, things. You never finish.

Most artists have experienced the creative block. We get stuck in our work. We beat our head against the wall: nothing. Sometimes, it is because we are trying something at the wrong time.

Books and movies are never finished, only surrendered.

That's the terrible thing: the more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it.

Any working composer or painter or sculptor will tell you that inspiration comes at the eighth hour of labour rather than as a bolt out of the blue. We have to get our vanities and our preconceptions out of the way and do the work in the time allotted.

The hardest part of doing anything creatively is just getting up and doing.

My struggle over the years has constantly been, it only takes 10 minutes, or an average shower, to come up with a mini-series or two, but it takes a year to draw them. So for me, it's been just trying to find a way to get all these ideas and all these incidents on paper.

Art is never finished. It is only abandoned.

As a composer, every project begins with either a blank sequence or a blank manuscript and for the first couple of days you cover and experience every emotion under the sun. Fear being the main one.

When one's not writing poems - and I'm not at the moment - you wonder how you ever did it. It's like another country you can't reach.

Writing is not hard. Just get paper and pencil, sit down, and write as it occurs to you. The writing is easy-it's the occurring that's hard.

I'm doing one of three things: I'm writing. I'm staring out the window. Or I'm writhing on the floor.