Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.

When I started 'Record Collection,' I had no idea that it would come out sounding the way that it did, and that's one of the best things about the creative process, taking turns with the things you didn't know.

My idea of artistry has always been 'try everything until you find out what works.'

Public sharing is an important part of science.

The beauty of the collage technique is that you're using sounds that have never met and were never supposed to meet. You introduce them to each other, at first they're a bit shy, clumsy, staring at their shoes. But you can sense there's something there. So you cut and paste a little bit and by the end of the song you can spot them in the corner, holding hands.

I don't want to have anything to say, it just gets in the way. I think the journey of an artist is a journey of discovery and some engagements with paint, with the nature of material, with bodily things...One wants to open the story, not close it.

At times failure is very necessary for the artist. It reminds him that failure is not the ultimate disaster. And this reminder liberates him from the mean fussing of perfectionism.

No one has been able to define or synthesize that precarious, splendid, and perhaps untidy instant when the creative process begins. This is what the uniqueness of the artist is all about. The transcendent right of the artist is the right to create even though he may not always know what he is doing.

It is vain for painters... to endeavour to invent without materials on which the mind may work.

One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite different.

While you're being creative, nothing is wrong. There's no such thing as a mistake, and any drivel may lead to the breakthrough.

Any artist is an instrument-and that's exactly why you can't do it all the time. You can only do it when it's happening, when it's coming through. No matter how much you may want to do it, if it's not happening then it's simply not happening.

When you work with an actor and then you discover new things that are better, I think you gotta be free to be able to go with the new things that you're finding. I think that's very important. I have a strong idea when I go to shoot a movie but I also love to discover things when I'm on set as well.

It is the job of artists to open doors and invite in prophesies, the unknown, the unfamiliar; it’s where their work comes from, although its arrival signals the beginning of the long disciplined process of making it their own. Scientists too, as J. Robert Oppenheimer once remarked, ‘live always at the ‘edge of mystery’­—the boundary of the unknown.’ But they transform the unknown into the known, haul it in like fishermen; artists get you out into that dark sea.

The artist is obliged to invent the self who will paint his pictures.

If an artist wants to use his mind for creative work, cutting oneself off from society is a necessary thing

Rules are what the artist breaks; the memorable never emerged from a formula.

You put the right artist on the right track in the studio and leave the door open to let God in.

An artist must have imagination. An artist who does not use his imagination is a mechanic.

When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature.

I'm constantly striving to break through to something new. You try to maintain a neutral approach to your work, and not be too hard on yourself.

You need others. Too often people think that being unique means being isolated, and being a great artist means coming up with genius ideas out of nowhere. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The longer I've been writing scripts, the more I find that you have to give the artist more leeway or else you'll just be disappointed. You can't force them to draw every image that's in your head. Since I'm a horrific artist, I wouldn't want them to anyway. So I definitely give them a lot more leeway now than I did at the beginning.

What's interesting about making art is that you take everything you know about it and you bring it up to that point, and you start making a physical thing that addresses what that is. And when you do it, you don't know anything about it - if it's going to work or not work.

To be an artist, you have to nurture the things that most people discard.