Art Spiegelman Quotes

It's hard to predict and to say what goes on inside the minds of an artist, but that's what makes them an artist. That sense of creativity. That thing that makes them tick is probably the very thing that pushes them to the extremes that sometimes can cause, you know, fatalities and things that, you know, that end up not being good.

Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.

Cartoonists' dirty secret is that we tend to come up with stories that involve things that are really fun to draw.

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.

A lot of times, the idea of a comic will be, 'Wouldn't it be cool if you...' But instead of doing it, I'll draw a comic about it.

I love cinema and creating new things, but essentially, I am creating all this because I want people to see it.

That's what I find so special: when you actually imagine something. But really, when it comes to you in a dream, and then you can bring it to life on the screen, it's very powerful.

My pictures really finish themselves.

When I'm drawing a bottle or a town or a market, I transport myself there. So I start drawing everything that I'm looking at while I'm there. Here's a guy selling the meat, and he will have a hook, and you start adding things, and it's a lot of fun.

What makes me put pen to paper? You know, that's the million-dollar question. I've been writing since I've been reading. It's not a question I think that's even meant to be answered, but it's something you always seek to discover the answer to. And the process of filmmaking is one of discovery, and self-discovery at that. Pleasure... it's not exactly what I would call fun, but it's absorbing.

Try drawing or painting a scene you're working on. Often this will help free up you imagination.

Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.

Anything that propels me to create, like [my book, Straight Walk]. It kept me inspired for almost four years.

How certain human beings are able to create works of art is a mystery, and why they should wish to do so, at a great cost to themselves usually, is another mystery. Works are not created by one's life; every life is rich in material.

If I get ideas independently of the act of writing, they never really fit. So for me, there's no hanging out, waiting for inspiration.

I love to be alone, I find it necessary, but I don't know if that's just how I am or if it's an essential ingredient to making, to art. Certainly on a practical level it is. But on the other hand, I think it's a myth that the creative inspiration is locked up inside the person and just needs a quiet space and the right "serious" brooding moment to get released.

It is vain for painters... to endeavour to invent without materials on which the mind may work.

I don't think that writer's block exists really. I think that when you're trying to do something prematurely, it just won't come. Certain subjects just need time, as I've learned over and over again. You've got to wait before you write about them.

People ask me how I make music. I tell them I just step into it. It's like stepping into a river and joining the flow. Every moment in the river has its song.

Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes.

You can't really do anything creative without a source of inspiration.

I write separately from the inking up. I'm sure this varies from cartoonist to cartoonist; I find that the writing is the hard part and the drawing is the fun part.

I try to paint what I have found and not what I look for. In art, intentions are of little importance.

More important than having a romance with the object that I'm drawing, is to have a romance with the mark that I am making.

I have been doodling with ink and watercolor on paper all my life. It's my way of stirring up my imagination to see what I find hidden in my head. I call the results dream pictures, fantasy sketches, and even brain-sharpenin g exercises.