Clive Barker Quotes

Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of the world.

I've always considered myself a poet in everything that I do, whether it's photography or movie-making.

Writing is only a guided dream.

The different aspects of my activity, whether it's writing criticism, or doing visual work that incorporates writing, or teaching, or curating, is all of a single cloth, and I don't make any separation in terms of those practices.

The good thing about writing books is that you can dream while you are awake. If it’s a real dream, you cannot control it. When writing the book, you are awake; you can choose the time, the length, everything. I write for four or five hours in the morning and when the time comes, I stop. I can continue the next day. If it’s a real dream, you can’t do that.

A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true. They're like strange countries that you have to enter.

I never intended to write poems, nor to be a photographer, nor to be a film-maker. I just took many, many pictures and I would put them in an album, and then some years later I decided to show them and suddenly I was called a photographer. Same thing with my poetry. They're notes that I'd written in a book and it may be considered poetry.

I don't know that I make a big distinction between the big pieces and the little pieces, because I don't experience them in that way. I mean, by the same token, you're out touring with a band and then you're writing string quartets, and in a funny way, isn't it all the same, in a way? It's all just music.

I'm dreaming about making movies for eight weeks, because it's a luxury. But time is money. That's the reality.

She gathers my half of the blankets around her and curls up against the wall. She will sleep for hours more, dreaming endless landscapes and novas of colour both gorgeous and frightening. If I stayed she would wake up and describe them to me. All the mad plot twists and surrealist imagery, so vivid to her while so meaningless to me. There was a time when I treasured listening to her, when I found the commotion in her soul bitter-sweet and lovely, but I can no longer bear it.

At a young age, I really wanted to make music and make my own sort of thing. I'm sure if it wasn't music, it would have been writing, or it would have been maybe painting. I just always had the drive to try and make something with my hands and to just pull something out of myself and shape it and see it in front of me, if that makes any sense.

Art furnishes us with eyes and hands and above all the good conscience to be able to turn ourselves into such a phenomenon.

And here in my isolation I can grow stronger. Poetry seems to come of itself, without effort, and I need only let myself dream a little while painting to suggest it.

The man, the art, the work--it is all one.

I'm a sponge, the more I absorb, the more I am able to articulate my vision, as artists do, like Picasso. I'm an artist in that light. I went from being an artist to an artiste.

Being an artist is a totally godlike thing to do - and I have a god complex.

I always say writing is like dreaming, shooting is like living, and editing is like murder, because you take all these gifts that actors give you, and you cut them.

I have been doodling with ink and watercolor on paper all my life. It's my way of stirring up my imagination to see what I find hidden in my head. I call the results dream pictures, fantasy sketches, and even brain-sharpenin g exercises.

I am a completely different person when I am working on different collections.

I think working with artists is incredibly important for everybody in the world, but also, it is a way of seeing the world differently.

In Old English they don't say I had a dream, but there's another usage of the word - "life is but a dream," to be corny about it. It's implied with eyes wide open, rather than asleep. But I'm not a philosopher to explain myself. I wish I could. Maybe that's why I'm a musician.

A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it.

Th' embroid'ry of poetic dreams.

You get caught up in a cycle at some point, so I broke the cycle and decided; I'm going to really write a lot of books, because I need to get in touch with that part of myself in order to make more music.

I am not a juicy painter.