Seth Godin Quotes

Frustration is one of the great things in art. Satisfaction is nothing.

To make great art, you had to expose your soul, and some things should be left safely in the dark.

I think anything emotional adds to your acting and singing, no matter what it is that you go through. It will always add to it, never take away.

You have to have the time to feel sorry for yourself in order to be a good abstract expressionist.

In my sculpture, it's not an image I am seeking, it's not an idea. My goal is to re-live a past emotion. My art is an exorcism, and beauty is something I never talk about.

I want to write and direct, but I don't think if I did it for 100 years I would ever come close to putting something out there that gives a feeling of all-encompassing and joyous.

I put everything I can into a record. That's what art is for. I take a risk every time I do one with my whole being.

Making art is an act of courage. Do you know who said that?

There is something about writing poetry that brings a man close to the cliff's edge.

I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

The truth is, anyone who puts so much of herself and her life into art as you do must naturally fear any failure in that art as a potential threat to your life. And so you protect your art more than you protect your health or the common forms of happiness the rest of us have. And you probably have this in common with every artist you admire.

I think my poems immediately come out of the sensuous and emotional experiences I have, but I must say I cannot sympathise with these cries from the heart that are informed by nothing except a needle or a knife, or whatever it is.

In a world where irony reigns, where you have to separate, protect and laugh at anything that is honest or has an emotional charge, I bet for catharsis. I like to invest emotionally in things. And catharsis, when it touches the emotional vein, can open the doors of even those who protect themselves.

I'd rather get back to making art than talk about it.

When I look at the majority of my own songs they really came from my own sense of personal confusion or need to express some pain or beauty - they were coming from a universal and personal place.

Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible.

A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object.

If I'm not invested emotionally, the artwork doesn't feel emotional.

The only thing in life that really gives me any peace is just being lost in the process of creating something, whether it's the film or painting and drawing, which has been a big part of my life, for a long time.

If I'm not crying while writing a song, I'm not doing it right.

I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That's the job. The key is that I make it safe for them to open the vein.

I don't like watching people work if they're making art.

Art is the objectification of feeling.

If you're feeling emotional when you're creating something, it'll sound that way.

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.