Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Quotes

All bad art is the result of good intentions.

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

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality, to be not nature but nature's essence.

One does not set out with the idea that I've just had a great idea and now I'm going to go and carry it out. Almost all art that's made like that doesn't go anywhere.

In every artist there is poetry. In every human being there is the poetic element. We know, we feel, we believe.

Works of art always spring from those who have faced the danger, gone to the very end of an experience, to the point beyond which no human being can go. The further one dares to go, the more decent, the more personal, the more unique a life becomes.

I never wanted to grow a thicker skin; I felt a real sense of pride in my thin skin, and in a weird way, I still do, because it's my thin skin that allows me to empathize with other people. It's the thing that allows me to create vulnerable art. It's the thing that allows me to create other feelings and make songs that actually grab people and touch people. I feel like I've spent my life fighting that thicker skin because I don't want to become an embittered asshole.

You know what ART stands for? Above Real Truth.

If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.

The definition of inspire is 'to fill with the urge or ability to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.' There you have it: Jeffrey Bilhuber inspires me. I watch him make his magic, and I want to do the same. Those are always my favorite people, the ones who are so alive in the practice of their art that I want to jump in and join the fun.

I've dedicated a lot of my life as a writer to understanding how to hear the divine voice, or the music of the spheres, or whatever it is that we do when we're making art, making something out of nothing. Figuring out how to do that is much more important than knowing how to execute a good line. I don't think about that anymore, I just write.

With the true artist, the social formula that he recommends is a matter of secondary importance; the source of his art, its animating spirit, is decisive.

It is not the how of painting but the why. To imitate a style would be a little like teaching a tone of voice or a personality.

Art is art, nature is nature, you cannot improve upon it.... Pictures should be inspired by nature, but made in the soul of the artist. It is the soul of the individual that counts.

Many people seem to think that art is a luxury to be imported and tacked on to life. Art springs out of the very stuff that life is made of. Most of our young authors start to write a story and make a few observations from nature to add local color. The results are invariably false and hollow. Art must spring out of the fullness and richness of life.

Truth and reality in art begin at the point where the artist ceases to understand what he is doing and capable of doing - yet feels in himself a force that becomes steadily stronger... and more concentrated.

Everything in art must spring from the movement of our whole life-stream, of our whole being - including the unconscious.

You cannot create a piece of art merely for money. Doing it as part of commerce so denudes art of wonder that it ceases to be art.

My whole family is very art-based. My sister runs a gallery, my other sister works for PACE in New York, my other sister is a sculptor. I'd say the ending one is me because that's the artist and the artist feels a lot.

Beautiful buildings are more than scientific. They are true organisms, spiritually conceived; works of art, using the best technology by inspiration rather than the idiosyncrasies of mere taste or any averaging by the committee mind.

Art is interested in life at the moment when the ray of power is passing through it.

The true poem is the poet's mind.

No artist produces great art by a deliberate attempt to express his own personality.