Gerhard Richter Quotes

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

I have a desire to create more film, more beauty, more art, more love, but I don't feel desperate. It's not about creating or building a career.

I'm just sittin here trying not to be unhappy.

I don't believe that artists really are interested in money. That's not the motivation for art.

I think I am pretty much melancholic.

It's what people create that makes my heart stop.

Sometimes, I wake up and the skies are grey and everything's horrible.

I view art as an inspirational tool.

Wherever you look there are inspirations, books, literature, paintings, landscapes, everything. Just living is an inspiration.

I get a bit gloomy when it's gloomy.

I'm somewhat depressive.

I can't speak for everybody. But I will say that for me, when I've been depressed - and I get depressed. I have irrational bouts of anxiety. I have random FedEx deliveries of despondency. Just like, 'I didn't order this. Oh, well, keep the PJs on, cancel everything you're doing today. It's time to take a sad shower.'

I'm inspired by visual stimulation.

I'm always sad.

If I don't stay creative and if I don't stay in the studio and keep writing and recording, I get kind of depressed. I can't quite remember what I'm supposed to be doing with myself.

The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. The least energizing emotion to write out of is admiration. It is very difficult to write out of because the basic feeling that goes with admiration is a passive contemplative mood.

An original is a creation motivated by desire.

Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?

To love is to transform; to be a poet.

I can't cheer up — I don't want to cheer up. It's nicer to be miserable!

As a matter of history great developments in art have often been remarkably separate from religious motivation and use.

Don't think about making art, just get it done.

Once you can open yourself to joy, you feel as if you've transformed your sadness into illumination, which is really all that art is. All we want to do is transform the negative emotions into light. We want to compost them into light.

What I became a comedian for was to get my art out. To get some of these feelings and things I had on my chest out. I don't care if people believe them, listen to them, change their ways, or think, or any of that kind of crap. I'm interested in showing off. I'm the same kid from sixth grade who stood up and said "watch this."

Writers are egotists. All artists are. They can’t be altruists and get their work done. And writers love to whine about the Solitude of the Author’s Life, and lock themselves into cork-lined rooms or droop around in bars in order to whine better. But although most writing is done in solitude, I believe that it is done, like all the arts, for an audience. That is to say, with an audience. All the arts are performance arts, only some of them are sneakier about it than others.