Beth Moore Quotes

The main thing is to write for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust that imagines its haven like your hands at night dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast. You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous. Take off from here.

A key to my thinking has always been the almost fanatical belief that what I was engaged in was a literary art form. That belief was compounded out of ego and necessity, I guess, a combination of the two.

I'm the kind of person who lives my art. It's not that I want to necessarily do it: it's that I have to. It's always been that way. That's how I write songs, and it's always been this way.

People who are artists professionally are not artists because they want to be artists; they have to be artists. They're compelled to get that creativity out and to share that with others.

When a writer talks about his work, he's talking about a love affair.

I'm not looking to be an artist to make money. I'm looking to be an artist.

I knew I wanted to be a writer before I knew that being a writer was possible.

I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge.

The only reason why you should do a film is because it creatively carbonates you and gets you going. If you're doing it for any other reason, you've lost sight of why you're acting in the first place.

If you cut a painter's hands off, he'd still feel the urge to pick up a brush.

The best books come from someplace inside. You don't write because you want to, but because you have to.

But where there is no art show, I would still be painting.

The only real reason to write professionally is that you love it enough.

I make music not to make money but because it's in me.

When I get an artistic itch, I have to scratch it.

I don't write anything down - it comes from my head and my soul and my heart and my pain. That allows me to make the best music I can make.

No one really had to encourage me to become an artist; it was just something I knew I had to do. I was drawn to things that seemed impossible.

I'm not a fan of my own work. People ask why I do it, but it's because I actually love what I'm doing in the moment. I live for it. It's a release.

Only be an artist if you have no choice!

I collect art like other people eat pizza. I can't get enough of it. I need a constant source of inspiration.

In the end, you write the book that grabs you by the throat and demands to be written.

When one wants to write, one writes. If one is condemned to write, one writes.

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.

Another thing I like to say to my students is this: "How many Corinthians read Paul's letters?" The answer is none. They couldn't have cared less! There aren't even any Corinthians left, but Paul's letters persist. Paul was not a professional writer. He was called to something, and he sent his letters. That's a good way to look at it. That you might be making something that nobody cares about, but you have to do it. It's not that people should care, but that you should care.

Actually, when I write, there is a feeling of necessity, of something that is stronger than myself that demands that I must write as I write.