Walker Percy Quotes

We've always had a tradition in America of hounding our artists to death. Look at the list of our great artists, you see a continual history of defeat, frustration, poverty, alcoholism, drug addiction. The best poets of my generation are all suicides.

A little artist has all the tragic unhappiness and the sorrows of a great artist and he is not a great artist.

I think that in Sweden and a lot of European countries, there's this whole mythology of the wounded artist: that you can't really do any great art unless you're suffering.

I don't think successful musicians were really put on this planet in order to have a great time, pat themselves on the back and say, 'Oh, what a clever boy I am!' I think that, like most artists, we were put on the planet to suffer just a little. And we do.

When you break an artist, you learn a lot.

The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.

People who paint, including myself, get to a point where a bit of angst comes in. If you're doing it for a living, it's worth it to suffer those slings and arrows.

It is only too true that a lot of artists are mentally ill - it's a life which, to put it mildly, makes one an outsider. I'm all right when I completely immerse myself in work, but I'll always remain half crazy.

People who go into the arts are often hurt people. Many are manic-depressive. Some have tried suicide and some have succeeded. It's just part of the game. We are people who are oversensitive. That's why we're in this business, because of our need to communicate.

A writer or any suffering artist-to-be is just an instrument too finely set to the human condition [...]

If the artist is necessarily sensitive, does that sensitiveness form in its essence a state constantly liable to shade off into the morbid? Does this liability, moreover, increase in proportion as the effort is great and the ambition intense?

I have an artistic temperament, which is a really tragic thing.

I was given the gifts of the artist, and the trouble that goes with them: So I have that blessing, and there was never a time thatI questioned it or doubted it.... For forty years, I wanted to jump out of windows.

I think being creative is incredibly difficult and painful.

Our wishes are our most reliable mirror, and the black-and-white movies I'm most drawn to are about artists who suffer because art is a noble thing; suffering is such a small price to pay for the imagination.

It takes a lot of emotional high and struggles to write songs.

Sometimes I hate writing songs. Because it hurts sometimes. I'm very emotional.

It's like you don't know you're making a record unless you're half-killing yourself.

They best can judge a poet's worth, Who oft themselves have known The pangs of a poetic birth By labours of their own.

A painter can hang his pictures, but a writer can only hang himself.

Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don't make it any harder on yourself.

I thought originally when I was in school and I wanted to be a poet, I knew that poets seemed to be miserable.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.

Songwriting is Hell on Earth. If it isn't, then you're doing it wrong.

Writing a novel is like childbirth: once you realize how awful it really is, you never want to do it again.