Ma Yansong Quotes

Artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.

Vision is the true creative rhythm.

True artists are prophets. I don't want to be that prophetic in that sense because it's so lonely.

I write stories that are already in the air, and I think it's important to have the correct listening device to tune in to that frequency.

For a long time, I have been making many predictions, far in advance, of events since come to pass, naming the particular locality. I acknowledge all to have been accomplished through divine power and inspiration.

A great artist transforms our world, removes scales from our eyes, plugs from our ears, gloves from our fingertips, teaches us to perceive reality differently.

An artist sees that which does not yet exist. He or she imagines a future others cannot perceive. The artist - and the writer - reshapes reality so that it becomes even more vivid and lasting.

This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another.

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.

I think artists can go to a level of vision that can often save us from a situation which seems to have no solution whatsoever.

I always say, and I truly believe this, that my work is three steps ahead of me. I have an idea for something and I tend to feel like it's leading me and I'll follow the process through, and it's not until after I've seen it that I truly understand why I'm doing this.

Insight is the first condition of Art.

I'm not a fortune-teller.

I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.

Most photographers would feel a certain embarrassment in admitting publicly that they carried within them a sense of wonder, yet without it they would not produce the work they do, whatever their particular field.

For me, Picasso was the ultimate man. He taught me that photography is all about how you approach an image: what you do and what you don't do. He inspired me to go beyond what you think is in front of you.

The difference between a top-flight creative man and the hack is his ability to express powerful meanings indirectly.

If we limit our vision to the real world, we will forever be fighting on the minus side of things, working only too make our photographs equal to what we see out there, but no better.

I think creativity is spiritual. I absolutely believe that.

Art and works of art do not make an artist; sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.

To see things in the seed, that is genius.

Oh, I just tend to believe in things when I'm writing them. For instance, when I was writing 'Doctor Dee,' I believed in magic. And when I wrote 'Hawksmoor' I believed in psychic geography. But as soon as I type the last full stop, I'm back to being a complete blank again.

What you need to be a good photographer is an overwhelming curiosity and a good digestion. Sometimes you feel blessed with curiosity, sometimes you feel cursed with it.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.