Cornelia Parker Quotes

The urge to write poetry is like having an itch. When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it.

It was really written as most, I think, books are by writers - for themselves. There was something that just had to be written, in a way that it had to be written. If you know what I mean.

No, I think that a person writes a poem because they have an inner urge of something that they want to express, and I think it's that inner urge that you want to express when you write a piece of music.

I write because I write - as anyone in the arts does. You're a painter because you feel you have no choice but to paint. You're a writer because this is what you do.

When I get an artistic itch, I have to scratch it.

People who are artists professionally are not artists because they want to be artists; they have to be artists. They're compelled to get that creativity out and to share that with others.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings.

I love to act. I need to act. It's the big itch I need to scratch.

Anxiety is part of creativity, the need to get something out, the need to be rid of something or to get in touch with something within.

I don't fall into the category of tortured artist. But it's not made me more or less anything.

The real artist has no idea that he is sacrificing himself for art. He does what he does for one reason and one reason only-he can't help doing it.

The inspiration to write? Perhaps it's not so much inspiration, as a NEED to write. I get itchy and guilty and dissatisfied when I haven't written for a while. Ideas come to me and need to be written down.

Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works.

The best books come from someplace inside. You don't write because you want to, but because you have to.

I don't write for the money. I write because something in me is constantly compelled.

Some people get turned on by my work, and it sells, but what drives me is the process of making it.

I think it all comes from the same source, really, the writing of music, the writing of words, the playing of music. It's what drives anyone to be interested in the arts. I think it's a poetic gene; it's a wanting to go beyond.

The idea - or, if you like, the need - to write and record 'Lash Out' was born of a feeling within me.

I feel like Court Yard Hounds keeps us idling. I think Emily and I function better when we're continually making music and playing, and this is a way to keep doing that.

No one really had to encourage me to become an artist; it was just something I knew I had to do. I was drawn to things that seemed impossible.

It is essential for artistes to have that release of creativity, almost as necessary as eating food or drinking water.

The only reason I create something is because I'm chasing a feeling. You can use a bunch of musical or psychological operations to achieve that result.

When you sit down and there's nothing, and then you write a song and there's something, that's the most extraordinary feeling.

I have creative energy in me that needs to come out one way or another, but that's where Revamp comes in.

I have a desire to tell stories. And I'm never quite satisfied.