Carolyn Chute Quotes

When I'm writing, I am lost in my book. Except family and close friends, I don't care about what critics, publishers or readers might think.

I really like writing poetry and lyrics because it's one thing where I give up control. I don't feel like I need to be in control of it. I just sort of let it happen, and then I know when it's done. I know when it's finished.

The great liberation of imaginative writing is that you're not held back by the facts.

Rule of art: Cant kills creativity!

I've always written in a free, unencumbered way.

I'm not thinking when I'm writing, 'How's this going to read?' Or, 'What percentage of the audience is going to stay with me?' The thing itself is what gives me pleasure. Sometimes stuff just falls onto the page so beautifully and happily that it's deeply satisfying. It's selfish!

One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you'd rather be in.

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

I think of a piece, and then people who are competent fabricate it. But lately I've started finger painting, which probably should be a joke but isn't!

The great liberty of the fictional writer is to let the imagination out of the traces and see it gallop off over the horizon.

You know, as you compose music, you're just off in your own world. You have no idea where reality is, so to have an idea of what people think is pretty hard.

The only thing in life that really gives me any peace is just being lost in the process of creating something, whether it's the film or painting and drawing, which has been a big part of my life, for a long time.

I've had to write in a different way because I'm not in a bad place and I'm not heartbroken, so there's no one I want revenge on.

To be an artist, you need to play inside your work.

I write just knowing that I enjoy writing. But if I have to write, it seems like nothing comes. But when I go there for my own pleasure, the Lord might just give me loads of stuff all at once.

No, I never had any dreams. The process of art is a dream in itself. The artist just doesn't... you work out something. It's yours. You don't have to go to sleep to do that. You do that on the canvas.

There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit or unlit, as the world allows.

I'm writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and I'm very greedy, and I really enjoy it!

No one was creating and I always wanted to be created on.

All the things we have to remember, and I've mentioned this before, is that we're all artists.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

As a creative person, you want to start with a blank canvas.

I'd like to make something about someone who hasn't existed so that I don't have to tread so carefully and can feel a little bit more creative freedom.

Lots of creativity is and should be solitary.

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.