James Thurber Quotes

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

Mr. Disney believed everyone was still a child deep inside.

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.

Scratch an artist and you surprise a child.

I write for what's left of the eight-year-old still rattling around inside my head.

The act of writing a song involves a degree of letting go of yourself, and that's very much being a child.

It's a blessing to stay a child all your life - pretend to be this and that. And get paid for it.

Use your imaginations, and use your empathy. If you don't do that, you're limiting yourself as an artist, and you're hurting the world.

An excess of childhood is the germ of a poem.

The imagination is precious. Don't lose it. Don't lose the child in you.

Don't be too dismissive of children. While it's true that few children are artists, all artists are children.

The child in us is always there, you know, and it's the best part of us, the winged part that travels farthest.

All children are natural actors, and I'm still a kid. If you grow up completely, you can never be an actor.

I think of myself as a little kid, and I had a wild imagination, but it was something that was encouraged and supported, which helped steer me into the arts.

A great artist is a great man in a great child.

I am always who I am, and anyone who's known me forever will tell you that. I guess there's enough of a child in me that that's important.

You see a child play, and it is so close to seeing an artist paint, for in play a child says things without uttering a word. You can see how he solves his problems. You can also see what's wrong. Young children, especially, have enormous creativity, and whatever's in them rises to the surface in free play.

Sendak's 1963 classic 'Where The Wild Things Are' has long been a favorite of mine because of the creative imagery, fantastic adventures and, most of all, because of how this timeless story shows us that children need to be free to roam, explore and invent in order to understand their place in the world that surrounds them.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.

But I'm the only one who can paint the moon, because I'm the only one who knows whether that's right or not.

I've never outgrown my childhood.

No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you're keeping the man-child alive.

Anybody with artistic ambitions is always trying to reconnect with the way they saw things as a child.

I think that inside every adult is the heart of a child. We just gradually convince ourselves that we have to act more like adults.