Doug Aitken Quotes

Oh, Spring! I want to go out and feel you and get inspiration. My old things seem dead. I want fresh contacts, more vital searching.

I don't feel so alive if I'm not being creative.

I start from something considered dead and arrive at a world. And when I put a title on it, it becomes even more alive.

All the best parts of art come from pain turned to celebration.

It is only in the shadows, when some fresh wave, truly original, truly creative, breaks upon the shore, that there will be a rediscovery of the West.

The creative act amazes me. Whether it's poetry, whether it's music, it's an amazing process, and it has something to do with bringing forth the old out into the world to create and to bring forth that which will rejuvenate.

Music. It's all creativity right here, right now.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

The best thing you can do when you're not feeling funny is go out and get more stimuli from the world, get out and walk around, read a book, go talk to some birds or a dog and replenish the well, as it were.

If you look at the content of songs people write, it's usually about the things they know best.

Sometimes, you just have to clear your head and get out to see other things. It is very important to be nourished. I love to go to museums and galleries, I like to see theatre, film, dance - anything creative. It doesn't promise you inspiration, but it nourishes your creative soul, and that's good.

Vitality is radiated from exceptional art and architecture.

I search for surprise in my architecture. A work of art should cause the emotion of newness.

I can't bear living in this huge beautiful world and not try to imitate it as best I can.

I feel at various times in my life that I've been at a point where I had to choose between a death sentence and a life sentence. And I want to live. What do I do to live? What do I do to be vital? And the answer is always creativity. The answer is always art.

You always feel the drawing you are working on is the best you've ever done... I am only interested in the present.

I have the same feeling when I walk in a very beautiful place that I have when I play and it goes right.

But I've always tried to make the best of fear, then, because without fears there's no art.

Wherever you look there are inspirations, books, literature, paintings, landscapes, everything. Just living is an inspiration.

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.

That's the thing about music: It's forever. Hopefully, you captured a moment musically that has a timeless quality people will find relevant to their lives at any point. That's the whole idea about what I love about art and music.

Wonder and awe are the diet of the artist and without them the world would be far less meaningful to us than it is.

I can't say that there are 'things' that make me come alive. There are thoughts that make me come alive.

I get inspiration from all kinds of things: I can get it from hanging out with my son, from hanging out with my wife, from checking out different artists, from hearing something at a party.

I'm inspired by breath, by the human body - by so many things.