Cornelia Parker Quotes

The poet is he who inspires, rather than he who is inspired.

I consider creativity to be a more non-rational, subconscious thing. You have a relationship to your creativity - you can feed it with content, with some rational prodding and sleep and things like that, but the mechanisms by which your creativity work are largely unknown.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

I don't think I really invented anybody. I have drawn on real life.

The great songs just come out. If it comes quick, just leave it that way.

It is the mystery of the creative act that something other than our conscious self takes over.

I don't really care who gets their inspiration from where, it's the end results that count.

Yes, influences are enriching, and they can be found in every work of art, even the most original.

Your creativity before it gets formed into words and songs is the actual substance. No one else can see it, right? Unless you give it the shape of a song or a painting or whatever.

I wanted to create a body of work that I was proud of. It's come from honesty and integrity, without forcing anything from myself, the ideas had to come instinctively and organically. Whether that translates to people in that way, it's kind of out of my hands now.

I don't know how to make magic. For most songwriter's that has only happened once or twice, and I don't know how to re-create that. I know that there are some tricks and tools, but the magic is the amazing part.

If an artist may say nothing except what he has invented by his own sole efforts, it stands to reason he will be poor in ideas. If he could take what he wants wherever he could find it, as Euripides and Dante and Michelangelo and Shakespeare and Bach were free, his larder would always be full, and his cookery might be worth tasting.

An artist's job is to surprise himself. Use all means possible.

Originality is the only thing that counts. But the originator uses material and ideas that occur round him and pass through him. And out of his experience comes the original creation.

You think you photograph a particular scene for the pleasure it gives. In fact it's the scene that wants to be photographed. You're merely an extra in the production.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

I work rather blindly. I have a theory that seems to work with me that some of the best things you ever do sort of come through you. You don't know where you get the impetus and response to what's before your eyes.

Great writers create; writers of smaller gifts copy

Sometimes listening to music can motivate you. It can. But if you're a musician, that isn't always the way to get new ideas because you don't want to take somebody else's ideas. You need to find your own. So if you go to different artistic mediums, whether it's dance or it's visual arts or films or books, stories, sometimes it gets you hearing things, hearing progressions that you wouldn't come up with if you were just listening to other music because you don't want to copy progressions you've just heard.

I don't pick subjects as much as they pick me.

When people ask me what it is about Brazil and my work, it's not something that I can say literally. It's unidentifiable. It's like when you do research and things inspire you. If you're smart enough, then obviously you don't take it literally. The inspiration will come out later somehow.

I'm not much given to making shamanistic remarks about all this, but I'm a great believer in the dream life. If I can carry without spilling whatever it is that drips into my head in the night to my desk, then that's valuable.

So much of what we do as artists is a combination of personal experience and imagination, and how that all creeps into your work is not so linear.

If I don't have a model in front of me, I don't have an idea.

I guess my husband is a muse as well.