Siobhan Davies Quotes

Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn't fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will - with luck - come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise.

A collection is not just one basic idea. It comes from something that is in the air, something you suddenly like and put down on paper and then work out.

One does not set out with the idea that I've just had a great idea and now I'm going to go and carry it out. Almost all art that's made like that doesn't go anywhere.

Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.

Writing is an incessant process of discovery.

Every movie I make teaches me something. That's why I keep making them.

I think everyone has the potential to be creative, but they have to find the avenue or avenues that work for them.

In any art, you don't know in advance what you want to say - it's revealed to you as you say it. That's the difference between art and illustration.

I'm not the kind of artist who has an idea and then carries it out; it's more like I find what the idea was through doing the paintings.

I think that that's why artists make art - it is difficult to put into words unless you are a poet. What it takes is being open to the flow of universal creativity. The Zen artists knew this.

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.

Every time I make a film, I feel it gives me the chance to learn something new.

That's what I've always wanted to do - work with my favorite writers and make something from scratch with them that we can feel like didn't exist before we came in the room.

I think the greatest privilege you have as an artist is time to nurture what you want to make; that's super luxurious. For you to rush into something, that doesn't feel fun to me. I'm living life in order to be able to write about it.

Every artiste has a process.

I can't just go into the studio with one idea and be all in on that, 100 percent. It takes me a while to arrive at something that feels like it's finished.

Art is not the kind of thing where you get what you put into it all the time. So I learned to not expect anything other than the sort of joy of having a poem in front of me.

The challenge to each human is creation. Will you create with reverence, or with neglect?

Personally, I have had sometimes moments where I thought my idea behind the idea of a collection - the concept maybe - something that we don't see at the end on the catwalk, I think the way it was, the genesis in my mind, was probably artistic, an artistic approach.

Everything I make starts very personally.

Sometimes for a lot of new artists, they don't have a vision, really, or know what they want to say; it's kind of drawn out for them. But me, because I'm such a transcendental thinker, it's always like a journey and an adventure with each project. It's like going through a different doorway each time.

I always say, and I truly believe this, that my work is three steps ahead of me. I have an idea for something and I tend to feel like it's leading me and I'll follow the process through, and it's not until after I've seen it that I truly understand why I'm doing this.

After it's finished, sometimes I can trace a path that goes back to the possible source of inspiration.

I've always felt that there's a point where a piece seems to be alive, that is, living. And that's the point where I know the composition is finished.

When you talk to an author - to any artist, really - you learn something about how they do what they do. I've never come away from that kind of experience feeling disillusioned, as if the magician had explained his tricks. I always find a greater appreciation for the form.