Rei Kawakubo Quotes

The ultimate point of a piece for me is that it drives the next one. Does it open new doors? That's the success of a piece.

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

You just gotta record stuff and move on and make new material. Painters don't wait until they're in some specific gallery before they move on to the next painting.

Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.

That's what's great about the arts. Everything inspires you, and you get a chance to grow from watching other people and how they do their work.

Artwork is not like a commercial business; there is no such thing as a schedule for art. You can't hurry art.

I had a teacher in art school who said something about the only works he really enjoyed seeing or found much in were works where he had a sense that a discovery was made in the course of making this object. I like to hold to that as my marching orders.

If you are a writer or any kind of artist, if you change something as fundamental as where you live - the way you live - then I think you change the very instrument that is trying to make the art.

You know creators, composers, need a palette for life, a color for life.

Music is the doorway that has led me to drawing, photography, and writing.

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

A lot of times, I don't feel responsible for the songs myself. But that's my job or my place in life: to keep my search and catch the ideas before they pass me by.

Like all artists, I go through creative spurts.

The little dissatisfaction which every artist feels at the completion of a work forms the germ of a new work.

I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs. They all find their place in the world, but they all start off in the same place. I'm always painting and drawing as well, and it's an ongoing creative assignment.

If you capture the first thought that you have when you're creating, and then play that to people, it's kind of like the listeners are part of that beginning. And that's the most exciting part.

So much of what we do as artists is a combination of personal experience and imagination, and how that all creeps into your work is not so linear.

In my experience a painting is not made with colors and paint at all. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint?

I create work, and I devote myself to the creative process, and I try to, you know, stay pure in that process and be worthy of the messages that I receive.

Every time I make a film, I feel it gives me the chance to learn something new.

There's no better feeling than just going in and just working with someone and what comes out is something that the world knows about.

I think if you speak to any creative person, there's something so powerful - so intoxicating, if you will - about discovering another voice, another instrument, another way of looking at things, another way of perceiving things.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Even if you're not releasing songs, the act of creativity is important. That's the part I love, when you're in the moment. The rest of it I'm not particularly interested in at all.

Art is not the kind of thing where you get what you put into it all the time. So I learned to not expect anything other than the sort of joy of having a poem in front of me.