Robert Henri Quotes

It's the strong will of an artist that really inspires me.

The painter's obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work.

When I got into art school, I thought it was paradise. I wanted to be an artist so much that I was really driven and nothing could stop me.

If you have a great work in your head, nothing else thrives near it; all other thoughts are repelled, and the pleasure of life itself is for the time lost.

The best reason to make a film is that you feel passionately about it.

The things that I've done that have totally been remembered, they've always started with the same kind of engine, they've always started with someone saying 'I have to make this film - I'm going to make this film whatever the odds'.

The real artist has no idea that he is sacrificing himself for art. He does what he does for one reason and one reason only-he can't help doing it.

An artist is nothing without his or her obsessions, and I have mine.

There is nothing more powerful than the made-up mind.

An artist is completely amoral in that he will rob, beg, borrow, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

We do not make art. We have unnamable motors and dangerous impulses that occupy our thoughts.

As long as I can remember I feel I have had this great creative and spiritual force within me that is greater than faith, greater than ambition, greater than confidence, greater than determination, greater than vision. It is all these combined. My brain becomes magnetized with this dominating force which I hold in my hand.

I always wonder what drives us as Artists.

You turn if you want to. The Lady's not for turning.

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.

As an artist you have to find something that deeply interests you. It's not enough to make art that is about art, to look at Matisse and Picasso and say, how can I paint like them? You have to be obsessed by something that can't come out in any other way, then the other things - the skill and technique - will follow.

I've seen Joe take on many battles, cancer being one of them, and the determination that he has, and he won't stop, he's not going to make one announcement and write one editorial and go away.

Dedication, absolute dedication, is what keeps one ahead!

I always believe you can't kill good movies, because somebody's in some room and will die unless it gets made.

Creative artists have great passion.

A brave soul is a thing which all things serve.

Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

A strong will deals with the hard facts of life as a sculptor with his marbles, making them facile and yielding to his purposes, and conquering their stubbornness by a greater stubbornness in himself.

I make films for myself, first and foremost, just because it is such a personal experience, and it's something I really have to want to do and feel connected to.

You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having.