William Butler Yeats Quotes

One thing about me is that I'm very much like the Black Madonna. I love to reinvent myself and that's because I am a very free person.

Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is like a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.

I think in more ways than one 'Uyir' did a lot good, getting the scope to perform. Things have really fallen in place since then. Breaking free of the shackles has given me the rich option to choose and pick from the range of characters coming my way.

To desire to be an artist is to desire to be a complete man in respect to some one function, to realize yourself utterly. A man is a poor thing who is content not to be an artist.

I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.

I think perhaps I've learned to be myself. I have a theory that all artists who would be important - painters and writers - must learn to be themselves. It takes a very long time.

I became an artist because of the possibility it gave me to develop in another way, because I didn't want to follow the same lines the others around me did. I was educated in the former German Democratic Republic, which meant that an individual figure had to be... like a soldier in the army.

I used to sing like Nat King Cole. I mean he was the guy when I was comin' up, and you know, man, people used to say of me, "Damn, he sure do sound like Nat King Cole." But there was a day, and luckily for me it was early, when I woke up and asked myself, "Well, when are the ask me to sing because I sound like me?" So my advice is, never do anything that you don't like.

In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recongize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight - perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman.

I never put myself in that box of you're an Oscar winner so you can only do this or that. That's one award, one night, and it does not define my career or it does not define me as an artist. I never wanted to get put in that Oscar box because that's a lonely place to be.

I wish neither to possess nor to be possessed. I no longer covet 'paradise'. More important, I no longer fear 'hell'. The medicine for my suffering I had within me from the very beginning but I did not take it. My ailment came from within myself, but I did not observe it, until this moment. Now I see that I will never find the light unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel, consuming myself.

The funny thing is, about the time I let go of any aspiration toward worldly success, that's about the time I started writing decent work.

I think it's bad for human beings to be artists. It's awful. You want to do something but you're constantly trying to decide what you want to do. Let's just say it's no place like Hawaii.

I'm a musician. I write songs. I just hope when the day is done I've been able to tear a little corner off of the darkness.

Sometimes when we awaken from the bad dream of disowning ourselves, we think that the sojourn to self-discovery is a new one. But it is an ancient quest.

I called record Prism because I actually finally let the light in and then I was able to create all these songs that were inspired by letting the Light in and doing some self-reflection and just kind of working on myself.

I think artists should be able to do different things whenever they want and I like the way I am. I'm like - I ain't gonna say the only street rapper, but the only mainstream, new, young street rapper there is right now and I'm doing well with it.

Only in our creative acts do we step forth into the light and see ourselves whole and complete.

God pity us indeed, for we are human, And do not always see, The vision when it comes, the shining change, Or, if we see it, do not follow it, Because it is too hard, too strange, too new, Too unbelievable, too difficult, Warring too much with common, easy ways, And now I know this, standing in this light, Who have been half alive these many years, Brooding on my own sorrow, my own pain, Saying "I am a barren bough. Expect, Nor fruit nor blossom from a barren bough."

I am not a liberal, not a conservative, not a believer in gradual progress, not a monk. I should like to be a free artist and nothing more.

The Artist's Way is a spiritual journey, a pilrimage home to the self.

You must dare to disassociate yourself from those who would delay your journey... Leave, depart, if not physically, then mentally. Go your own way, quietly, undramatically, and venture toward Trueness at last.

It took me a long time to understand not to get caught up in other people's expectations. It really comes down to creative fulfillment. It took me a while to realize I don't want to just be on a show to be on a show.

Do the thing itself. Don’t pay much mind to critics or what anyone says about it. Just do it, in any form possible, and watch others doing it. Take it in viscerally, get it by osmosis. Don’t ever read your own reviews, certainly not the good ones.