Gary Zukav Quotes

The most pleasurable thing in the world, for me, is to see something and then translate how I see it.

Art flies around truth, but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before.

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.

Insight is the first condition of Art.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

Some people would say my paintings show a future world and maybe they do, but I paint from reality. I put several things and ideas together, and perhaps, when I have finished, it could show the future.

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit or unlit, as the world allows.

If you're a creative person, what inspires you is always changing; it's always shifting.

When I first made a grid, I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees, and then a grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence, and I still do, and so I painted it and then I was satisfied. I thought, 'This is my vision.'

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

The longer I look at something, the more my imagination churns and I can find somewhere to put it.

Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass.

Telling people how to be creative is easy - being creative is difficult.

I'm not going to be like, "I gotta get this idea out of my head." It's like, "OK, here's a clean slate, and I've got all these paints, and all these brushes, and this is what I'm going to do with it." It reveals itself, and you take a step back and say, "What's happening here? Where are we going? What does this mean? Do I need to break it open? Does it need to just be what it is? Should it end now?"

Poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time.

People get inspired to write, paint, draw, sing, sculpt, dance in many different ways. And there are many types of art. But the one thing that they all have in common is that they are all a sort of magic. Sometimes the magic flows from one’s fingers, other times it is transferred to the person who experiences the result. Magic has always worked in mysterious ways.

What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?

Jean Renoir once suggested that most true creators have only one idea and spend their lives reworking it, but then very rapidly he added that most people don't have any ideas at all, so one idea is pretty amazing.

When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something.

The power of painter or poet to describe what he calls an ideal thing depends upon its being to him not an ideal but a real thing. No man ever did or ever will work well but either from actual sight or sight of faith.

When creative people do their best work, they're hardly ever in charge, they're just sort of rolling along with their eyes shut yelling wheee.

Imagination is the beginning of creation.

To be an artist, you have to nurture the things that most people discard.