Plato Quotes

He who without the Muse's madness in his soul comes knocking at the door of poesy and thinks that art will make him anything fit to be called a poet, finds that the poetry which he indites in his sober senses is beaten hollow by the poetry of madmen.

That impulse I think is a form of love. Poetry is something that comes to you, rather than your having to work out its form beforehand.

Art is a little bit larger than life - it's an exhalation of life and I think you probably need a little touch of madness.

I believe it is no wrong Observation, that Persons of Genius, and those who are most capable of Art, are always fond of Nature, as such are chiefly sensible, that all Art consists in the Imitation and Study of Nature. On the contrary, People of the common Level of Understanding are principally delighted with the Little Niceties and Fantastical Operations of Art, and constantly think that finest which is least Natural.

Of all the arts poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and will least be guided by precept or example) maintains the first rank.

I've done an incredible amount of painters. It's an area, for me, where there's more mystery left. I've photographed so many musicians, I've been in studios so often, I know the whole process. The mystery's gone from it. I think it's important to keep mystery into our lives. There's a longing connected with it.

Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.

But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched by the same madness and genius.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

To work in a treadmill all one's life, to wear oneself to the bone all one's days, is not conducive to the outflowering of genius. If we desire a real crop of great art, great poetry, great thinking, we must provide the proper conditions.

Making music and writing kind of come from the same creative place.

I wasn't in the art world at all as a kid; I was just creative, and we were always doing arts and crafts.

If there is to be art, if there is to be any aesthetic doing and seeing, one physiological condition is indispensable: frenzy.

I feel mushy these days when I think about art and artists and the work that lies ahead for us. There's good work to be done and there's joy to be found in it, I think.

What I feel fortunate about is that I'm still astonished, that things still amaze me. And I think that that's the great benefit of being in the arts, where the possibility for learning never disappears, where you basically have to admit you never learn it.

Don't think about making art.

Here, where we reach the sphere of mathematics, we are among processes which seem to some the most inhuman of all human activities and the most remote from poetry. Yet it is here that the artist has the fullest scope of his imagination.

One of the springs of poetry is joy.

To make art you need to be inspired.

The Muses inspire art and pretend not to notice when Mammon buys it.

When you think intensely and beautifully, something happens. That something is called poetry. If you think that way and speak at the same time, poetry gets in your mouth. If people hear you, it gets in their ears. If you think that way and write at the same time, then poetry gets written. But poetry exists in any case. The question is only: are you going to take part, and if so, how?

In the end nobody knows how it's done — how art is made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn't explain the magic of creation. Nothing can.

Do not copy nature. Art is an abstraction. Rather, bring your art forth by dreaming in front of her and think more of creation.