Henry Miller Quotes

The artistic impulse seems not to wish to produce finished work. It certainly deserts us half-way, after the idea is born; and if we go on, it is labor.

I'm doing what all modern artists do now, which is nothing - just sit around and dream about things. I'll do what they call 'the stroke of genius.'

I like being surrounded by all the stuff that makes me feel creative and inspires me.

I don't understand how people live without creating.

It is a mistake to talk about the artist looking for his subject. In fact, the subject grows within him like a fruit and begins to demand expression. It is like childbirth. The poet has nothing to be proud of. He is not master of the situation, but a servant. Creative work is his only possible form of existence, and his every work is like a deed he has no power to annul. For him to be aware that the sequence of such deeds is due and ripe, that it lies in the very nature of things, he has to have faith in the idea; for only faith interlocks the system of images for which read system of life.

Art is the result of a creative impulse derived out of a consciousness of life.

The artist must raise the cup of his vision aloft to the gods in the high hope that they will pour into it the sweet mellow wine of inspiration.

As much as I love performing, nothing juices me up creatively like being in my own studio for an extended period. Songs, ideas, even paintings are pouring out of me. My inspiration and usual subject matter: life.

I'm a sponge, the more I absorb, the more I am able to articulate my vision, as artists do, like Picasso. I'm an artist in that light. I went from being an artist to an artiste.

I always wonder what drives us as Artists.

Just slap something on it when you see a blank canvas staring at you with a sort of imbecility.

I begin my pictures under the effect of a shock which I feel and which makes me escape from reality... I need a point of departure, even if it's only a speck of dust or a flash of light.

Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.

The best of artists hath no thought to show which the rough stone in its superfluous shell doth not include; to break the marble spell is all the hand that serves the brain can do.

In the beginning, there was a kind of energy that - like an urgency to express myself, and the songs just couldn't be held in. But I think it changes, the nature of how that - what that energy is. And I need to court the muse in a much more serious way.

That's the difference between the serious artist and the craftsman--the craftsman can take material and because of his abilities do a professional job of it. The serious artist, like Proust, is like an object caught by a wave and swept to shore. He's obsessed by his material; it's like a venom working in his blood and the art is the antidote.

How certain human beings are able to create works of art is a mystery, and why they should wish to do so, at a great cost to themselves usually, is another mystery. Works are not created by one's life; every life is rich in material.

I almost never start with an image. I start with a painting idea, an impulse, usually derived from my own world.

And what I love about music and art in general is that you can take something so negative or positive - any emotion, no matter how sad or happy - and turn it into art.

We're all inspired by what has come before us, but hope to use the inspiration to create our own. That's the artist's journey. It's a pretty amazing path.

I don’t have a problem baring my emotions in music. That’s one of the reasons I’m glad to have music in my life. I’m pretty resilient as far as being a human being. A lot of songs write themselves.

How our old friend [Michelangelo] of the Sistine would have loved to photograph his workers, perched on the fragile planks. Dali was right to say Leonardo only worked from photographs.

All this angst, all this stuff we all feel, is just tied to making art. It's so ancient.

In every artist there is poetry. In every human being there is the poetic element. We know, we feel, we believe.