Olivia Newton-John Quotes

I'm a writer. An amateur photographer. An actor.

I was fortunate because I had parents who believed that being a writer was a perfectly acceptable thing to want to be. They'd actually hoped that I might be an artist, and I was lucky again to grow up with people who delighted in making things: my father wove baskets and painted furniture and carved wood figures; my mother quilted and embroidered and sewed.

When I can focus on something like guitar or painting, I do. I started painting people I admire, like Kerouac, Bob Dylan, Nelson Algren, Marlon Brando, Patti Smith, my girl, my kids.

My father probably - he had flashes of creativity - he used to do store windows for fruit stores that he worked in and stuff.

He looked into the crowd for approval, saw his mother and father. He waved and they waved back. Smiles and Indian teeth. They were both drunk. Everything familiar and welcome. Everything beautiful.

My mother is an artist, and I have a strong visual sense. I almost always choose the cover art for my books.

We live in the least ugly time in history. If you look at back when Beethoven was writing, half the kids were dying, mothers were dying at childbirth, there were more wars going on then than there are now. People wrote the most beautiful things during the ugliest times.

My mother playing the violin and my father and grandfather playing the piano, classical stuff.

A father who is a chronic debtor, an adulterous mother, a beautiful wife, and an unlearned son are enemies in one's own home.

A lot of my friends do creative things and are doing really well at what they do - some writers, some artists. I'm in a driven circle. I've had a lot of opportunities that other people wouldn't necessarily have and seen some cool places.

My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.

To my father, art had no restrictions. He was a true 'American Primitive.' He greatly enjoyed sketching and photography, carrying a camera with him whenever he could.

My dear sister! I’m amazed to discover that you can compose so delightfully. In a word, your Lied is beautiful. You must compose more often.

Drawing ... is an innocent & engaging amusement, often useful, and a qualification not to be neglected in one who is to become a mother and an instructor.

You know what talent is? The curse of expectation. As a kid you have to deal with that, beat it somehow. If you can write, you think God put you on earth to blow Shakespeare away. Or if you can paint, maybe you think--I did--that God put you on earth to blow your father away.

My mother was into opera and my father was into jazz, so there was a lot of jazz in the house where I grew up.

I've got a penny-ante talent, out of which I try to drum up a living for myself. And what nobody seems to realize is that it's just as difficult to get a bad idea as a good one.

[On writing her first poem at age eight:] An ode to my dead mother and father, who were both alive and pretty pissed off.

Every good piece of art... involves first essentially the evidence of human skill, and the formation of an actually beautiful thing by it.

The sudden silence is horrifying, and it seems to catch my mother off guard. A tiny whimper escapes her, the sound amplified in the stillness. Surely, my father hears her now; surely he and I can't go on pretending she isn't crying.

My mother and father have also raised five boys so they know there's only so much that can be controlled.

I'm a singer. I'm a dancer. I'm a performer. I'm an actress. That's what I'm supposed to be doing. It makes me a better parent, a better person. I think I can just handle more than the average bear, you know?

Joseph Gotto, yeah. Just all-around one of the more inspiring artists - not because of any sort of specific content direction, but rather the respect that I had for his own work and the ability for him to translate his ideas into useful form for me as a student.

As far back as I can ever remember, without really knowing it I wanted to be an actor. I was always dressing up, you know, playing pretend, putting on mothers hats and things. I'm sure Freud would have something to say about that. It was very much in my blood.

The word "photography" can be interpreted as "writing with light" or "drawing with light." Some photographers are producing beautiful photographs by drawing with light.. Some other photographers are trying to tell something with their photographs. They are writing with light.