Jack London Quotes

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest.

Once you start painting, you could of course get lost. I mean you get out of yourself, you don't know whether you're thinking, you just act actually sometimes.

If an artist is reaching for the universe as a source of creative muse, then I'm there. I'm gonna say, "Yeah. Here's Saturn. Here's a black hole. Here's twisted space-time. Talk to me. What do you need? What do you want?" And I'll just feed you, because I think only then does science become mainstream - when science becomes a legitimate topic for artists.

I think there's something we all relate to about...wanting to get to our most primal self.

I think being an artist is having the courage to be original. Many great artists, including Picasso, have all been influenced by the great master paintings... And then finally, they leap, they take off... they become themselves. Then it looks like they just came out of nowhere. Just like 'Pow!'

I think anything that affects me in my personal life is going to help me be a better artist on stage.

So is fighting incompleteness the source of artistic neurosis? I doubt it. At most, this would apply to artists who deal with particular kinds of problems. I don't think we should think of Haydn or Mozart or Dickens or George Eliot in these terms.

I think about sculpture all the time. I work at it for ten to twelve hours a day. I even dream about it. If as a result I was only to produce something that everyone immediately understood I would't have been thinking very profoundly.

I think talent has a huge amount to do with concentration, concentration rather than the athletic ability of your neurons. If you can concentrate on an esoteric piece of math, how can you think about the rest of your life? That's why people can leave their car keys in the gutter; they're in the midst of obsession and concentration.

We think it hugely important to support young artists, there is a war against that kind of artistry, that kind of creation...When somebody is 19 years old, they're gonna do what they're gonna do just like we did... For me the most important thing was for him to know anytime he can call and I'll come whatever happens.

I had seen "Force Majeure" and I just love that movie so much. And I really wanted to artistically give a little hello to the filmmakers, and that kind of back and forth dialogue between artists that say, "I loved your movie. I was influenced by your movie. If I didn't have this job, I wouldn't be thinking of that. Do my TV show and then one day I'll make a movie where I can play with some of the visual themes in "Force Majeure."

I finished touring the last record and I started recording new .I never really left the bubble, which is I think a good thing. I was just very focused. Maybe I should have taken a break or something, and not done such a long push.

There are obviously so many artists that are very inspiring, but I can't say that they like - that I have someone in mind that is like a creative direction of where I want to go as an artist. I think I'm just doing my own thing.

Wars come and wars go but the world does not change: it will always forget an indebtedness which it thinks it expedient not to remember.

I think it's important as a player every now and again to play something that's influenced you as an artist just to expose the people to it.

I think people are more in contact now with the consequences of war than they've been for a very long time. And that's what amazes me when sometimes politicians seem to forget their history. They don't look and re-learn about what has happened before. Maybe they haven't got the memory, maybe they're already too young, but you can see how we become puffed up, and how we as a nation rise so quickly if we're not careful.

You think you're an artist; prove it

I think I was born an artist. But the key is that I have a mom that encouraged and supported my artistic side. She still has the stick-figure drawings framed.

You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases.

The only question that nobody ever asks is: What breaks your heart? I think that should be asked of all "artists."... So, what breaks your heart?

I find that an entertainer is quite content to sit still, and I think an artist always has a little motion, always going somewhere. May not know where it is, but there is some sort of unnamed destination. There is some pulling, some movement. So I just found myself in that category according to my own analysis.

Very few people have a natural feeling for painting, and so, of course, they naturally think that painting is an expression of the artist's mood. But it rarely is. Very often he may be in greatest despair and be painting his happiest paintings.

I think anytime you set out to start doing something, it's always a difficult thing. It's a theory of a blank sheet of paper, for an artist; It's a challenge to put yourself in that position in life, and even in your mind, to put the two together. But you have to, and so that's what you do. I tend to look at it as less than a problem than a process.

To be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland during a world war. To be an artist in Zurich, in 1917, implies a degree of self-absorption that would have glazed over the eyes of Narcissus.