Sharon Olds Quotes

There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.

One does not set out with the idea that I've just had a great idea and now I'm going to go and carry it out. Almost all art that's made like that doesn't go anywhere.

I love making music, but if you make something that inspires somebody else to make something, without getting too airy-fairy, you've contributed to the zeitgeist in some way, and that's just an amazing feeling.

At some future time I shall see New York the artist's ground. I think you will create an American School.

That's what great art does - it inspires other artists to do great art, and that's what it should do.

If you look at art history, at Goya or Gainsborough, it's always about acknowledging the people of your time who have influence.

If I can be doing something in the arts till the day I die. I would be very, very happy.

When I taught art, I was always asked, 'How do you know you're an artist? What makes you an artist?' And to me, it's like breathing. You don't question if you breathe; you have to breathe. So if you wake up in the morning, and you have to realize an idea, and there's another idea, and another, maybe you are really an artist.

Unlike life, a work of art never gets taken for granted: it is always viewed against its precursors and predecessors.

I think if you speak to any creative person, there's something so powerful - so intoxicating, if you will - about discovering another voice, another instrument, another way of looking at things, another way of perceiving things.

Steichen bought my first photographs that I ever sold. He recognized the style from the school of Black Mountain. After that, it was about twenty years before I sold another photograph.

People always ask what my inspiration is, and it's never something that's easily explained.

The ultimate aim of all creative activity is the building!

I have all of these lives that I want the music to live, but at the end of the day, it's out there.

The most important thing as a filmmaker, the hardest journey you'll have, is to find your point of view.

Maybe some people, when they sit down to write their great novel or make their great record or paint their great painting, they have it all planned out in their head. But for me, it's never worked that way.

I wouldn't be as comfortable with who I am if it had not been for Prince. I mean, my label 'Wondaland' would not exist without 'Paisley Park' coming before us.

I think if my father was a truck driver, I would have wanted to share the beauty that was there. He just happens to be Johnny Cash.

There are so many artists that have inspired me.

I've always tried to create music the way Kubrick makes film, just kind of mimicking consciousness. He has a way of mimicking this greater power.

Anyone in the arts has had an experience of seeing someone who they related to doing something and thinking, 'I could do that.' If you have one generation where you force its hand a bit, then the next one fills in the gaps, because it's seen an example of what can be done.

You can only make the film that's in you.

We will always make music, but Die Antwoord is... finite.

The one artist who actually had influence over me was Bo Bartlett.

I'm glad Wu-Tang was able to inspire other producers and artists, but I would never want to be erased or removed.