Jane Hirshfield Quotes

Art is a mind-game that we do to make our lives easier. If it isn't for that, it becomes superfluous.

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.

Human requirements are the inspiration for art.

Art is not only about angst.

Art's a very metaphysical activity. It's something that enriches the parameters of your life, the possibilities of being, and you touch transcendence and you change your life. And you want to change the life of others, too. That's why people are involved with art.

Art is for entertainment purposes, but it's also to reflect our dreams, our hopes, the present, the future the past - whether it's good or bad.

The purpose of art is to accumulate the human within the human being.

Every work of art has its necessity; find out your very own. Ask yourself if you would do it if nobody would ever see it, if you would never be compensated for it, if nobody ever wanted it. If you come to a clear ‘yes’ in spite of it, then go ahead and don’t doubt it anymore.

Why does one begin to write? Because she feels misunderstood, I guess. Because it never comes out clearly enough when she tries to speak. Because she wants to rephrase the world, to take it in and give it back again differently, so that everything is used and nothing is lost. Because it's something to do to pass the time until she is old enough to experience the things she writes about.

Writing is something that's great because you get to write every thought that's on your mind; you take your time.

Art is the skin of the soul.

Part of being an artist is being able to write about the world you live in and the times that you've been a part of.

I think the job of art and drama is to hold a mirror up to those things and say, 'What do you think about it?'

Cinema and the arts invite viewers to focus on a story and, in doing so, peel away its layers and peer into the depths of the human soul.

The arts are beyond price; they're beyond value. They're of incalculable worth in what it means to be a human being.

I used to spend a lot of time alone as a kid, creating characters and doing voices in my room, and I thought to myself, I'm either going to go absolutely nuts, or I'm going to find something to put that energy into.

Everyone uses art for different reasons: We use it as entertainment. We use it as an escape. We use it as comfort. Everyone uses it for different reasons.

People create from different places. Some love to create from a tortured place, some from a joyful place. And when I feel like I'm a 5-year-old kid in my backyard playing pretend, that's when I'm happiest.

If I don't create, I don't exist.

When I get an artistic itch, I have to scratch it.

I almost never write because I want something from my audience. Almost everything I've ever written, I've written because I feel like I have to write this or I'll die. Like, this has to come out of me.

I've never really been met with indifference, where they say, 'Who cares?' I think that's what good art is supposed to do. It's not supposed to make you feel good about your own prejudices and your own values; it's supposed to open you up in some way and get you outraged or make you happy or make you sad or whatever it's going to do.

Individuals have to find a place to experience a profundity of feeling, and art is a means to that.

I need all of my songs while I'm writing them, because I need to get the stuff out of my body and out of my brain. I write out of necessity, not because I want to be a pop star.

Art is freedom. If we don't have that element, we don't feel human anymore. Art is not decoration or a function. Before all that, art is art. This connection to meaning - our inner, intuitive knowledge - is something.