Robert Motherwell Quotes

In a writer there must always be two people - the writer and the critic.

To question your own process is a necessity. If you don't question yourself, it's impossible to improve.

It's very rare I'll watch anything I'm a part of and think, 'I wouldn't change a thing.'

If I'm astonished by what I've done, then I know I've been somewhere in the making of it but not during the making of it. Only after the fact. If I'm not astonished, then I've failed in the making of it.

I've taken a look back at my body of work and tried to deduce an essence, capturing aspects that reoccur. Reflecting on your own product can be difficult yet enthralling.

It's funny, I can see the science in how music is made with other artists, but it's hard for me to dissect my own thing.

I've found that there isn't any correlation whatsoever between the hours put in and the quality of what comes out. Most of the Beatles' songs probably originated in about five minutes.

Any human act that gives rise to something new is referred to as a creative act, regardless of whether what is created is a physical object or some mental or emotional construct that lives within the person who created it and is known only to him.

It may sound affected - but it is the act of creation itself, and it is equally exhilarating whether one is working on a teaspoon or a national bank.

Self-criticism, like self-administered brain surgery, is perhaps not a good idea. Can the 'self' see the 'self' with any objectivity?

Fight with yourself when you paint, not with the model. A student is one who struggles with himself for order.

Writers themselves don't analyze what they do; to analyze would be to look down while crossing a canyon on a tightrope.

The only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out.

The fruitfulness of our lives depends in large measure in our ability to doubt our own words and to question the value of our own work. The man who completely trusts his own estimate of himself is doomed to sterility.

I don't want to deconstruct what I do.

Art is a game only if you playat it, a mirror that reflects from the inside out.

This is the eternal origin of art that a human being confronts a form that wants to become a work through him. Not a figment of his soul but something that appears to the soul and demands the soul's creative power. What is required is a deed that a man does with his whole being.

This self-reflection, this willingness to examine ourselves, to make corrections, to do better, that's part of what makes us Americans. It's part of what sets us apart from other nations, the United States is the most professional, most capable, most cutting-edge intelligence community in the world.

One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters.

I cannot judge my work while I am doing it. I have to do as painters do, stand back and view it from a distance, but not too great a distance. How great? Guess.

Keeping a personal journal a daily in-depth analysis and evaluation of your experiences is a high-leverage activity that increases self-awareness and enhances all the endowments and the synergy among them.

The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward.

Making art is a lot about just seeing what happens if you put some energy into something.

I usually don't write about my life right when it happens. I process it, and I store it away. Then, when I get in the mood I pull the stuff back out.

In putting images together I become active, and excitement is of another order - synthesis overshadows analysis.