Bell Hooks Quotes

Now, all writing - all the arts - are a form of 'Pay attention to me,' but there's also the flip side. Like, I want to give something. Let me entertain you, let me amuse you, let me try to please you with this thing I've made. And then pay attention to me.

Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That's how I see it.

For me, art is always a kind of theater.

Communication is very important. And the arts do that, whether it's film or theater.

I wanted to be an actor. That was my real goal. But I wasn't any good at it, so I wrote my own material and acted through that. That's my idea of fun. I get to be all these things in the songs.

I like singing all songs, really, but I find that writing social commentary comes naturally.

I sing because I love singing. I perform because I love performing. I write because I actually enjoy writing.

I love to rock 'n roll. But my finest suit, of all the things I do, is as a songwriter.

If you judge everything by how photographically real it looks, then you're missing out on a lot of what art is about and what communication is. There are ambiguities in life, and that should be reflected in art, cinema, and storytelling, I think.

If I weren't musical, then I would have just published a book, you know? But I'm lucky enough to play piano, and so I use piano to convert my poems.

I would advise puppeteering for any artist. It's a way to break down pretensions. It's a sculpture that can talk. It's a painting that can talk. And it's pure play. I think every artist needs to stay in touch with the idea of playing. The artist should always be playing, always. All art is performance.

I write poems for myself and I write poetry that gets torn apart and becomes songs. I have a lot of respect for words, the power of words.

I love artists, because through art one can express oneself beautifully.

I think from my earliest childhood, I liked to tell stories, put on plays and write things. It's funny to think of it as an "artistic bug" because I didn't necessarily want to be an artist. It's just who I was and how I communicate.

It's true that I can write a song and not really be sure what the meaning of it is.

Writing is a creative art form and the acting and directing is more of an interpretive art form.

One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtle, very changeable, running over my pen, as if you poured a large jug of champagne over a hairpin.

Creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.

I always wanted to be in the world of entertainment. I just love the idea of an audience being happy with what I am doing. Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That's how I see it.

All art is someone trying to tell you something.

Music means freedom to me. But in acting you can pretend to be someone else and I like that.

When you're an artist you're speaking about life, you're talking about your experience here on the planet. So essentially, that's what I do when I'm writing songs.

The secret of life is in art.

I paint the way some people write an autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages from my diary.

When I feel something very intensely or deeply or personally, I can go to extremes of self-expression or self-analysis by writing a poem - more than I can just talking to somebody or writing prose.