Ralph Allen Quotes

It's really about making the best music you can make. It's really about working hard.

If I'm painting, I paint every day. I'll be up in the studio from 8:00 in the morning to 8:00 at night.

When I wrote the opera, I made a deal with myself that for at least an hour a day I would work on it, even if it meant just sitting on my piano bench, staring into space and thinking about it. It's about keeping it regular, like your bowel movements - let's get real: it's your bodily artistic movements! It comes from the same place.

Being in the studio is okay but sitting in a room by yourself composing is a discipline that takes a certain type of mind set and Tommy has a great gift for that as did the previous guy.

When I'm in the studio, I stay in the studio, like, sometimes 20 hours out the day.

I want people to appreciate all the time and effort that I put into my art and my music.

The true professional makes art when he is not feeling good, if the studio is too cold or too warm or the walls are falling down. We are painters and we paint. If I were a sculptor, I'd sculpt.

I have never heard a dancer asking for advice about how to stay focused on her footwork, or a painter complaining about the dull day-to-day task of painting. What task worth doing isn't worth daily effort? Do you think Michelangelo was having fun the whole time he was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling?

Whether it's a painter finding his way each morning to the easel, or a medical researcher returning daily to the laboratory, the routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightning bolt of inspiration, maybe more.

My idea about collections is that you write as hard as you can for some period and what you're really doing during that time is hyper-focusing on the individual pieces - trying to make each one sit up and really do some surprising work.

I have disciplined myself when I'm working. When I discovered art, I realized that one could keep that search going within creation. But I also realize that in order to create the art, you have to stay, you can't go too far.

I feel such a creative force in me: I am convinced that there will be a time when, let us say, I will make something good every day , on a regular basis....I am doing my very best to make every effort because I am longing so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things mean painstaking work, disappointment, and perseverance.

Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting should begin by cutting out his own tongue

People think I live here on Nantucket and just gaze at the ocean, getting my inspiration. Not so. I work in my basement and gaze out onto a single window that shows me a cement wall. This is a profession, and it's important to have professionalism about the writing.

The business of the artist is not to escape from his material medium or bully it, but to serve it; but to serve it, he must love it. If he does so, he will realise that in its service is perfect freedom.

An album is a project with which you have to hit hard.

There is a great deal that either has to be given up or be taken away from you if you are going to succeed in writing a body of work.

An artist's working life is marked by intensive application and intense discipline.

You are desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real or imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen. It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well just go ahead and get started.

The actual writing is what you live for. The rest is something you have to get through in order to arrive at the point.

I worked as hard to write the worst film of the year as I did to write the best film of the year.

An artist might be attracted to hedonism, but of course an artist is not a hedonist. He's a worker, always.

I don't believe in inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. Some of the time you know you're cooking, and the rest of the time, you just do it.

I've found that writing novels is an all-absorbing experience - both physical and mental - and I have to do it every day in order to keep the rhythm, to keep myself focused on what I'm doing.