Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

When I see someone who reads something of mine and draws something out of it that's very different from my perspective, I think that's actually cool. Sometimes it's worrisome when you feel they badly misinterpret it, but it just says that they're thinking, and they're bringing their own interpretation to bear on it. [...] That's part of the wonderful thing about putting words into the world, and if I was worried about that, I couldn't be a writer.

I would never undermine a person's interpretation of a creative work.

Artists are people who are not at all interested in the facts - only in the truth.

The fear of a work becoming dated is one of the most effective tools for keeping people from writing political work.

People should be stopped from writing poetry. There's far too much of it. And if they're any good, they'll go ahead anyways.

The painter should paint not only what he has in front of him, but also what he sees inside himself. If he sees nothing within, then he should stop painting what is in front of him.

Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones.

I have intentions as a writer, but people - when they're listening to a track - will take from it what they interpret.

Artists are like messengers. A song is authored by you, but its interpretation is owned by other people. And you have no control over that.

You can never judge how the film will be taken; you can only make your best effort, and put out what you feel. How it's read, you never can tell. Or remembered for that matter.

There's no such thing as a bad photograph.

I try to create paintings that are a window for the imagination. If people look at my work and are reminded of the way things once were, or perhaps, the way they could be, then I've done my job.

You really can't be a good artist if you can't say what you really feel. And people may be offended, but, you know, that's how you feel, and that is your right, and that is your gift as well.

No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.

In not-for-profit theater, you don't worry so much about how the audience is going to react. You want to make them absorb the piece.

A movie is just like a work of art or a book or a piece of music. The intent of its maker is one thing, but its interpretation by an audience is something else. I don't stop at what the filmmaker wanted to do.

Art can be very political but that can't be the purpose of art, it can't be the driving force. It isn't with any of the books that I love, anyway.

No good poem, however confessional it may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster?

[Personal life] doesn't affect my creative process. It just gives me more subjects to talk about. Basically whatever you put in your music is how you want people to view you.

I'd always wanted to know the difference between a mark that was art and one that wasn't.

I try to write art theory down and understand it but I'm not a writer. I don't want to impress people with my writing. I'd rather impress people with my ability to see and feel it and then share that.

I do not photograph nature. I photograph my visions.

What a terrible world it would be if we only did films that were poster boards for political causes.

The writer of history is perhaps closer to the artist than the scholar.

Drawing is not following a line on the model, it is drawing your sense of the thing.