Alfred Kazin Quotes

Love is in all of the books, and that's the connective tissue between them. There's a lot of hope in me; I can feel it. These stories are balls of light for me.

Art is not only about angst.

The writer is the engineer of the human soul.

I think that one of the things that drives me in telling stories, and art in general, is finding the beautiful in a big mass of ugly.

Art is giving to what you create a soul.

Once, Pee-wee Herman tweeted a photo of this guitar I made that's shaped like a slice of pizza, and it meant a lot to me. People downplay it, but there's power there, people reaching toward each other and toward truth. Any mechanism, any resource that we can use to further that reach, is part of the human destiny.

Do you know how many movies I wrote when I was high?

I mean, I like to be creative because it challenges me to try to be better than I am as a person and I hope that in some way that that makes someone else think and feel something about themselves that then has given them the opportunity to grow.

Art is the work of a human being – something a person does with generosity to touch someone else to make a change for the better.

Technology is a big destroyer of emotion and truth. Auto-tuning doesn’t do anything for creativity. Yeah, it makes it easier and you can get home sooner; but it doesn’t make you a more creative person. That’s the disease we have to fight in any creative field: ease of use.

Great writers are not those who tell us we shouldn’t play with fire, but those who make our fingers burn.

Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.

I don't know how to say easily what I learned. One thing I can say I learned is how amazing photography could be.

All art, literature, and music must be born in your heart's blood. Art is your heart's blood.

If there is any reason to single out artists as being more necessary to our lives than any others, it is because they provide us with light that cannot be extinguished. They go into dark rooms and poke at their souls until the contours of our own are familiar to us.

Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.

He's bent over the strings tuning his guitar with such passionate attention I almost feel I should look away but I can't. In fact I'm full on gawking wondering what it would be like to be cool and casual and fearless and passionate and so freaking alive just like he is- and for a split second I want to play with him. I want to disturb the birds. Later as he plays and plays as all the fog burns away I think he's right. That's exactly it- I am crazy sad and somewhere deep inside all I want is to fly.

I don't really know why an idea comes to me. But all of a sudden, an idea comes and from experience I can intuit what something means when an interesting line pops up. Or I can intuit what an interesting choice might be. And I can try a couple of different choices, and see which one feels right, and then continue the song to see where it goes.

My paintings are only the ashes of my art

I don't think writers are any smarter than other people. I think they may be more compelling in their stupidity, or in their confusion.

We get closer to God as we get more intimately and understandingly acquainted with the things He has created. I know of nothing more inspiring than that of making discoveries for one's self.

All the great things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they who have founded religions and created great works of art.

A creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.

Every experience shapes your writing, being stuck in a car on a lonely bridge, or dancing at a prom, being the it girl on the beach, all of those things influence your life, they influence how you write, and the topics you choose to write about.

When love is out of your life, you're through in a way. Because while it is there it's like a motor that's going, you have such vitality to do things, big things, because love is goosing you all the time.