Denis Diderot Quotes

You wind up creating from silence, like painting a picture on a blank canvas that could bring tears to somebody's eyes. As songwriters, our blank canvas is silence. Then we write a song from an idea that can change somebody's life. Songwriting is the closest thing to magic that we could ever experience. That's why I love songwriting.

I have a strange relationship with influences because mine are mostly literary or painters or poets, who I'll even quote. I don't do tributes to cinema.

We have such a great depth of human history in all of the arts, whether it's opera or mathematics or painting or classical music or jazz. There's so many things to study, new books to read, and certainly always ways to transform old ideas and to come up with new ones.

When truth has no burning, then it is philosophy, when it gets burning from the heart, it becomes poetry.

We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.

Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.

Vision is the true creative rhythm.

I enjoy trying to inspire myself. I enjoy the artistic side of everything. Music, art, fashion, everything. I just like to be on the cutting edge of it. I'm into designing houses and interior design. I like change. I like creating things out of nothing.

An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.

As human beings, we are the only organisms that create for the sheer stupid pleasure of doing so. Whether it's laying out a garden, composing a new tune on the piano, writing a bit of poetry, manipulating a digital photo, redecorating a room, or inventing a new chili recipe - we are happiest when we are creating.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

I'm inspired by art - in whatever form it takes. I love when I see a painting or a photograph that captures my attention.

When I discovered metaphor and what it meant, I got really excited. That was what really pushed me through into music.

Faith is almost the bottom line of creativity; it requires a leap of faith any time we undertake a creative endeavor, whether this is going to the easel, or the page, or onto the stage - or for that matter, in a homelier way, picking out the right fabric for the kitchen curtains, which is also a creative act.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

I like rhyme because it is memorable, I like form because having to work to a pattern gives me original ideas.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

The ability to make somebody feel something: that's art. However you look at it, whether you're an author, a painter, a singer, a rapper, a spoken-word artist - art.

Reason is a fine thing, but it is not the only thing available to a writer. It's just part of the arsenal of many things available to a storyteller. Revelation, for example.

To me, art begets art. Painting feeds the eye just as poetry feeds the ear, which is to say that both feed the soul.

The Resistance is a moral certainty, not a poetic one. The true poet never uses words in order to punish someone. His judgment belongs to a creative order; it is not formulated as a prophetic scripture.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

I write songs, and I sing them. I never formulated a plan; I can't tell anyone else how to do this. But it feels right, so I just kind of enjoy it and get on with it.