George MacDonald Quotes

If all I ever wrote about was inner city freaks, I think it would be dishonest.

Shading is more like copying. And certainly I do copy, but I'm making drawings, and I'm not trying to make them with the shading.

Be able to draw an illustration as least well enough to get your point across to another person.

People understand what art is supposed to look like, and so it's easy to make something that looks like art but isn't - especially in an abstract form.

I draw badly. Photography's much easier than drawing.

We cannot afford to have lies in music.

He who pretends to be either painter or engraver without being a master of drawing is an imposter.

For all the years I'd spent talking about pictures, the truth was that I had no idea how to draw or what it felt like to do it. I would mistrust a poetry critic who couldn't produce a rhyming couplet. Could one write about art without knowing how to draw?

Say what you mean. Say what you see. Make a photograph, if you can, for the reader.

Who speaks is not who writes, and who writes is not who is.

Every kind of writing is hypocritical.

When I open my mouth and sing, the truth comes out. When I write, the truth comes out. I can't lie. That, I think, is one of the strongest elements of my music. When people talk about my writing as though I'm doing it from an accountant's perspective, it really pisses me off.

There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.

People used to say my music was too difficult or too obscure, and I never set out to be difficult or obscure. I just set out to write what I felt as honestly as I could, and I am delighted when other people feel a part of themselves in the music.

O brave poets, keep back nothing; Nor mix falsehood with the whole! Look up Godward! speak the truth in Worthy song from earnest soul! Hold, in high poetic duty, Truest Truth the fairest Beauty.

When I'm writing something, if there's a part that's good for me, then I'll play it. Otherwise, I don't. And I notice that there are less and less parts for me in my own writing.

In art there is a need for truth, not sincerity.

Is passion what we are? Is that what we are in pictures? Is what we are in pictures almost real? Maybe it's become the most real thing.

Photography knows how to authenticate its misrepresentations.

In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies.

If you want to say something profound, writing from your heartbeat is different than writing from the loud voices you get from music. If they're rapping from noise, it's about robbing people. It's that simple.

Truthfullness to life-both fantasy life and factual life-is the basis of all great art.

I've gotten to the point where I realize that I need to tell my truth in music and not walk around blabbing my mind.

When I'm writing music, I'm not acting it out - it's all me. I feel that my responsibility is to be truthful about myself, first and foremost. I'm not going to sing things I don't believe in no matter who is benefitting from it.

Music is the one thing in which there is no use trying to deceive others or make false pretenses.