Dennis Hopper Quotes

No one was ever great without some portion of divine inspiration.

Only great people can make great products.

My goal is to get people thinking and trying to wrap their heads around the amazing things that have been achieved and to dream about what will be achieved.

God gives talent. Work transforms talent into genius.

Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius.

Genius is immediate, but talent takes time.

Jonathan is that brilliant little fire that burns within us all, that lives only for those moments when we reach perfection.

Some of the most brilliant things that someone might do could happen in three minutes because it's something that just occurs to them. And then, there's the example of really chipping away at something to create something great. I don't believe that one is more reliable than the other.

I am hungry for good work.

The biggest obstacle to creativity is breaking through the barrier of disbelief.

So, you know, I think any life has in it enough material, enough points of departure, to fuel a writer's career and that we shouldn't worry about what we're not but to try to focus on what we are and what we do know.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year.

The life that I live and the experiences that I have always affect what comes out of me creatively. I think that's what makes music real.

I think I'm happiest when there are really talented people around.

when you think you've got hold of a genius ... you can't be sure whether it's a spark of the divine fire or a mere flash in the pan.

I don't see what's so good about being genuine. Clog dancing is genuine. Isn't being fake more of an achievement? At least it takes some inspiration. Like, sherbet dips, they're a special food. Think of all the additives and coloring and grinding that it takes to create a sherbet dip. But carrots? They're just out there, shrieking, "Hi, we're some carrots! Love us for it!" They never have to prove themselves.

Joy is a part of my process. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that poetry, as a practice, necessitates a sense of joy. It's exhilarating to come into contact with the things we write into being. And a real sense of play and abandon – even when we are relying on hard-won technique, and even when the aim is deadly serious. How often do we get the excuse to stop, think, and then stop thinking altogether and try to listen to what sits behind our outside of our thoughts? Poets are lucky.

I never thought innovation as such was very important. Not when you have to think about it... If you're going to come up with a new direction or a really new way to do something, you'll do it by just playing your stuff and letting it ride. The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves.

That's the real power of art, I think. Not to chide but to provoke challenge. Otherwise why bother?

I think how I've gotten better, hopefully, at taking what I've got and being able to mish-mash something together, and as long as it feels real to me in the moment, then it feels like a success.

I think that that's always been a real talent of mine is to be able to spot somebody who has that thing that is so non-definable, that thing that I wish I possessed.

I was deluding myself that the song was almost not important, but I think the real thing that was happening was almost like self-hypnosis or mediation. The guitar lick was the transcendental key that unlocked my brain. It freed me. And then it all became easy. It's funny now, because I've had times when it wasn't easy.

"Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will," she says. The sky is like a monochromatic contemporary painting, drawing me in with its illusion of depth, pulling me up. "Yeah, that's true," I say. But then after I think about it for a second, I add, "But then again, if you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all."

I'm interested in genius the way a hungry man is interested in Philadelphia cheesesteaks. I want something. I want a piece of it.

L.A. has been really inspiring towards me for the last one and a half years. There is a lot going on here now. I've been here before, when I was younger, but I've never had this feeling about it. There are a lot of creative things bubbling in the atmosphere. It's so far away from everything else, which makes it a strange, exotic city. When you want to discover yourself, I think this is a good place to be. You don't feel like you are in a real place and I think that can be very good for making music or art.