Alberto Giacometti Quotes

As an artist, you can never get what you want. What you do never approaches what you want it to be.

Life does not measure up to performing... Performing is perfect.

By the time I'm done with a project, it's taken so long that I usually don't even like it anymore. I only see the things I wish I'd done differently.

Normally, in anything I do, I'm fairly miserable. I do it, and I get grumpy because there is a huge, vast gulf, this aching disparity, between the platonic ideal of the project that was living in my head, and the small, sad, wizened, shaking, squeaking thing that I actually produce.

I never made a film which fully satisfied me.

It was always disappointing to see that what I could really master in terms of form boiled down to so little.

If you give yourself too much time, you kind of over-obsess about the music. It's not supposed to be like that.

A lot of my friends are struggling musicians. Being a struggling actor, it's just frustrating because you're not allowed to do what you want to do.

But in the UK, I've given up any hope of being considered a director.

It's sad when you can't make everyone happy, though. It's impossible but, at the same time, you still hope. You think, 'Maybe I can do it,' but you know you can't. But gosh, if I had to rely on giving people what they wanted, I would have had to write 40 billion different books and even then, I wouldn't get it right.

Joni Mitchell seems destined to remain in a state of permanent dissatisfaction - always knowing what she would like to do, always more depressed when it's done.

People throw away what they could have by insisting on perfection, which they cannot have, and looking for it where they will never find it.

You can't have a perfect show every time.

So the poet, who wants to be something that he cannot be, and is a failure in plain life, makes up fictitious versions of his predicament that are interesting even to other persons because nobody is a perfect automobile salesman.

If only someone else could paint what I see, it would be marvellous, because then I wouldn't have to paint at all.

People say if you're doing an art project, that's different from a book, but I honestly don't see it. I try and try, and I just don't.

Most artists have experienced the creative block. We get stuck in our work. We beat our head against the wall: nothing. Sometimes, it is because we are trying something at the wrong time.

I'm envious of writers and musicians. I think it must be so difficult. Not just the frustration, but the discipline.

I felt I was painting with a Popsicle.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

I know writers, and they seem to be the most disgruntled part of the art world.

As a creative person, you want to be creative, you know? You don't want to constantly wait around - a lot of movies fall apart, or there's just not as much out there as there used to be.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Sometimes, trying to make a work of art can be very difficult and very painful.

I think being creative is incredibly difficult and painful.