Kingsley Amis Quotes

I think, like any artist, those baby songs are not the best things you've ever written, but they count because they're you're first attempts at creating art and expressing yourself.

I think of my studio as a vegetable garden, where things follow their natural course. They grow, they ripen. You have to graft. You have to water.

I think any good artist - and I'm not saying that I am one - takes notes and should first emulate their heroes and then try to move beyond them.

I wish to be of service to the artists of our own day, by showing them how a small beginning leads to the highest elevation, and how from so noble a situation it is possible to fall to utmost ruin, and consequently, how these arts resemble nature as shown in our human bodies.

I myself believe that there is in every painter's life a period of making absurdities. In my case I think that period is already long past.

I think if you're a creative person, then you're always kinda looking to move things along - 'Where else can I go? Where can I take this?' From painters to photographers - anything creative in the arts - if you're a true artist, I think you'll always look to do something else. 'Where else can I go with it?' Do you know what I mean?

As far as I was concerned, with the early paintings, I liked them, I thought they were pretty good, but I didn't think it was the end of the world. I also thought of it as a kind of structure, a base to build on. So this proves I can do this and that, and they don't collapse, so then what can I do from here? How can I build on it?

When you create stuff, you're always going to be progressing and where you're at a year down the line, as the creator, it's always going to feel immature. You're going to notice the flaws and the things that you've learned in that year aren't going to be there. So, I think it's important to see stuff as a capture of time - that's what I was doing at that time - and not be ashamed of it. That's how I try to approach music.

I can remember a lot of nights performing in those early years where you felt that you hit some good moments, but a lot of the time you're thinking, "Oh, God, this isn't quite making it." So I think that is what makes you in the end refine your view of things a little bit.

Perhaps I might be satisfied, momentarily, with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind.

We have to keep in practice like musicians. Besides, there are still potentialities to be realized in color film. To us, it's just like bringing up a child. You don't stop after you've had it.

There are certain early plays of mine that I really don't like, but I can't imagine going back and fixing them. I would be totally incapable of it. I'm not in the head of the characters anymore.

A lot of singers think all they have to do is exercise their tonsils to get ahead. They refuse to look for new ideas and new outlets, so they fall by the wayside... I'm going to try to find out the new ideas before the others do.

I'm still an artist who's searching, trying to evolve, an artist who - nine times out of ten - is dissatisfied with her work, and beats herself, and goes out there and tries again and again, and falls on her face and looks for new challenges.

I do not repudiate any of my paintings but there isn't one of them that I would not redo differently, if I had it to redo. My destination is always the same but I work out a different route to get there.

I started to write before I went to SUNY Purchase music conservatory. As an audition I submitted what I now think are really awful songs, but I guess they saw something in them.

The idea is that what an artist lives through should broaden his notion of what it is possible for a human being to live through, and that new understanding should then get into and expand the work.

So yeah, it's nothing that I'm doing on purpose, I just think that the more records, the more songs that I write, the more records that I make, you're obviously going to fall into a specific style and thank God it's a style that people are into.

Me being able to be acting and doing other things has opened me as an artist, and I think even more from a visual standpoint.

I kind of like the way that I came up as an artist. I like experimenting.

An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive at a place where he thinks he's AT somewhere. You always have to realize that you're constantly in a state of becoming. And, as long as you can stay in that realm you'll sort of be alright.

I am just beginning to understand what it is to paint. A painter should have two lives, one in which to learn, and one in which to practice his art.

I think that new artistic challenges help you grow both as a person, as an artist, and then they feed back into your other work, and tend to magnify it.

My hope is to continue to make new music and go with the flow. I think I'll always be creative. I want to keep making good music, put myself into positions where I need to rise to the occasion of playing in front of an audience, and continually get better at what I'm doing.

if you don't keep and guard and mature your force, and above all, have time and quiet to perfect your work, you will be writing things not much better than you did five years ago. ... you must write to the human heart, the great consciousness that all humanity goes to make up. Otherwise what might be strength in a writer is only crudeness, and what might be insight is only observation; sentimemnt falls to sentimentality - you can write about life, but never write life itself.