Robert Henri Quotes

I don't think that writers or painters or filmmakers function because they have something they particularly want to say. They have something that they feel. And they like the art form; they like words, or the smell of paint, or celluloid and photographic images and working with actors. I don't think that any genuine artist has ever been oriented by some didactic point of view, even if he thought he was.

That impulse I think is a form of love. Poetry is something that comes to you, rather than your having to work out its form beforehand.

If drawing belongs to the world of spirit and color to that of the senses, you must draw first to cultivate the spirit.

I want to draw and study a few things closely by feeling, not thinking.

Sometimes your fans are way deeper than you are. They think you meant something like this big power-of-the-world thing that you said, but really you were just trying to find a word to rhyme with another word.

I sometimes wish I had never had to sell a painting. Every painting you make represents the time it was made and how you were feeling and what your influences were... You are never going to feel that way again, so you can never repeat it.

I think in a lot of ways, writing, when you're really in there, is like being an actress because you're in somebody else's head.

I think that music is still a mystery to most people. It kind of goes through most people without a specific thought. They feel the music, which is what's supposed to happen. They're not supposed to be curious about who wrote the music; they're supposed to feel what the show is trying to get them to feel. So if I help get that feeling across, that's good enough for me.

Sensation is an element of what I do, and why not? It's not sensational for the sake of being sensational, but it's sensational art... It's like touching skin.

I think what's great about that relationship between an actor and a Director is you have to really blow away all your thing, the safety things that you put up.

Drawing is of the Spirit and color of the Senses.

Everybody is completely different. I think there is no formula for filmmaking. Everybody finds their own way of doing things.

I am unable to make any distinction between the feeling I get from life and the way I translate that feeling into painting.

When I'm putting the character together I try to find music that I think fits the character.

...imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic.

You know when I think about what I'm doing - what I'm doing and the way I'm doing it is more important to me than any amount of money or anything like that because it's my artistic work.

To me, the theatre - I don't like to say it, but I'll say it - is a temple in a kind of way, where human beings go to be elevated.

I try not to think the song to death. The main criteria is if it's working on an emotional level.

Writing is like making love. Don't worry about the orgasm, just concentrate on the process.

I find that the quest to be perfect and make perfect music is like a black whole. I realize that you can come with the intention to capture a vibe and use a formula, but you have to accept that most of the time its not going to be what you envisioned and you might manifest something better. I think that's been the hardest thing to wrap my head around that most ideas we go for ends up sounding different. I think art in general should be about enjoying the process and the experience. All that matters is if you feel the music and it captures the element your going for.

I haven't been walking around for years with some burning desire to do a solo record. If I had, maybe I'd have made a record that was experimental. Usually, the idea of a solo record is to get some weird stuff out of your system, but I don't think like that. I wasn't interested in making something that was a hard listen - maybe I'll get around to that some other time. I wanted it to sound effortless, not like I was trying to reinvent the wheel.

That's what I mean by something grips in a canvas. The moment that happens you are then sucked into the whole thing. Like some kind of rhythm.

If I come across an issue, or something I feel strongly about, and I happen to think of a song that would go in that direction, then I do it. But that's not what I start out, necessarily, to do. Sometimes I may have an idea for a song - "Well, I'm going to write about a thing.

I think the great artists (..) have always thought with the heart.

I'm not trying to spell out a story. I still think you feel the painting, and the reason you read the mark is because you also feel the mark.