Leonard Shlain Quotes

To be a good draftsman was to me a blessing.

Disney was not a good animator, he didn't draw well at all, but he was always a great idea man, and a good writer.

You may be perfect in playing the piano, and not be creative; you may play the piano most brilliantly, and not be a musician. You may be able to handle color, to put paint on canvas most cleverly, and not be a creative painter. You may create a face, an image out of a stone, because you have learned the technique, and not be a master creator. Creation comes first, not technique.

In Hollywood, they think drawn animation doesn't work anymore, computers are the way. They forget that the reason computers are the way is that Pixar makes good movies. So everybody tries to copy Pixar. They're relying too much on the technology and not enough on the artists.

What you need to be a good photographer is an overwhelming curiosity and a good digestion. Sometimes you feel blessed with curiosity, sometimes you feel cursed with it.

My mom was an artist, and she had this amazing ability to transform everything into something beautiful.

To really have craft, you must be able to repeat something as one has to do in films.

It's always an amazing gift to be able to work with storytellers who 'get it' and who can not only draw anything but can draw it better and more dynamically than you'd ever envisioned.

If someone took the finest marble and knew how to shape it artfully: Prometheus' material was lowly clay, but his statues walked.

I'm not "filled with my art". I ain't got no art. I've got only a kind of craftsman's skill, and make stories as I make biscuits or embroider underwear or wrap up packages.

Art is anything you can do well. Anything you can do with quality.

I believe and find in my study of art that the real artist is nine-tenths of the time a craftsman, and it is only in that small one-tenth of the time that he rises to the elevated position of a prophet and a master.

Drafting is not only an art, but there's a degree of science as well.

In sixth grade my teacher said that we had to do a talent show. You could sing or recite a poem... I went a wrote a little sketch for myself called 'Our Big World' about how many ways you could use a scarf.

If somebody's going to represent our music live, I'd like to see it represented with excellence and spectacularly and with really great musicianship.

It is probably like an artist. They see in their head what they want to draw, and they draw it. It is like I have a feeling inside me that I want to create on a horse, and that is what I do.

There's a great deal of poetry in working out how things work, cutting bits of metal, trying to mend stuff.

I think filmmaking is largely about preparation and taste and luck. If you have all of those three things, I think you will find you can work somehow.

To be able to run routes, that's like the greatest thing to me. It's kind of like an art to me. It's like a painter drawing or something like that. That's how I feel every time I run a route.

There's nothing more special than intellect and labour that makes painting work. There's no magic there; it's information, and it's work.

In terms of the symbolism, I think that if you do it right, writing is a bit like dreaming.

Every great dancer has so much to offer.

Real talent is mixing realism with bluff. Every great artist I really respect has a certain amount of bluff; sooner or later you have to be a conjurer, and conjure images.

Most people think that I'm so technical that I don't have a feel aspect or a rhythm aspect of it, but that's just the opposite. I need to get into my momentum and my rhythm in regards to being technical and analytical, and also being that artist.

I'd rather be musical than technical.