Albrecht Durer Quotes

I would never finish a painting if I didn't have a deadline.

Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.

To have nothing to do, to sit there waiting for little aches and pains, is fundamentally wrong. Life has to be lived.

I like having a studio to go to. It's like having a job.

I try to stay focused on my creativity.

I'm an artist, and I need to work, like everybody. We need to be challenged and that we're getting up and doing something with our lives.

The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose.

Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness; but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.

Those who are waiting for an epiphany to strike may wait forever. The artist simply goes to work, making art, both good and not so good.

Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.

What I say to an artist is, 'When you can't paint - paint.

An author who waits for the right 'mood' will soon find that 'moods' get fewer and fewer until they cease altogether.

When I can see someone that's posting the way that they're thinking about what's happening in the world right now or even art that they've created, it inspires me to do the same. It makes me turn off my phone and go paint a painting or go hike a mountain or go record a song. Those are the kind of things that social media helps me do. But it also can make me sit in my room and not do anything.

The sooner you learn to finish things, and as a matter of course finish your creative endeavors, the better. It took me a long time to learn that.

I have nothing like a writing routine. I sometimes have trouble buckling down to write at home.

Successful people are simply those with successful habits.

The best restriction I learned was getting into the habit of doing something, even if I didn't feel like it, instead of running away from it. Sometimes good work needs to be earned, and when you can overcome yourself, the muse notices and celebrates.

My agent, Jeff Andrews, suggested I write a book. For some reason. he doesn't like it when I'm not doing anything.

The only thing that's a challenge for me is not working. I get depressed when I'm not in motion.

I rise at 6. Strong coffee helps me face the paper edition of 'The New York Times.' It daily challenges my own capacity for faking anything deranged enough to sound true. I work till 2 P.M. unless I am in the throes of finishing something. I rewrite to be reread.

If I give myself a chore, for instance, when I was writing the songs for Shameless, I said to myself, Now, every day for 90 days you have to write a song; good, bad or indifferent. So that was really helpful.

I'm a writer, not a professional runner. It's fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration.

The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working.

Amateurs wait for inspiration. The real pros get up and go to work.

My block was due to two overlapping factors: laziness and lack of discipline.