Charlotte Bronte Quotes

Art is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man.

Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting should begin by cutting out his own tongue

I put everything I can into a record. That's what art is for. I take a risk every time I do one with my whole being.

Painting is a very difficult thing. It absorbs the whole man, body and soul, thus have I passed blindly many things which belong to real and political life.

You have to give every portion of yourself to it. As an artist, that is just what you do - because we love it - we were born to do it.

Before I was a parent I was struck by Rilke, who, as you know, didn't go to his daughter's wedding because he was writing a poem that day. That was the ideal for artistic behavior in 1950. That's the way I wanted to live.

It's always nice to have people love the things that you do. But it's a lot of hard work, and people are always passionate, if it's family fare or a drama, it's the same amount of work and people invest everything into that, and when it doesn't come out the way you want it to, of course it's hurtful.

When you decide 'to be a writer,' you don't have the faintest idea of what the work is like. When you begin, you write spontaneously out of your limited experience of both the unwritten world and the written world. You're full of naïve exuberance. 'I am a writer!' Rather like the excitement of 'I have a lover!' But working at it nearly every day for fifty years – whether it is being the writer or being the lover – turns out to be an extremely taxing job and hardly the pleasantest of human activities.

I have never heard a dancer asking for advice about how to stay focused on her footwork, or a painter complaining about the dull day-to-day task of painting. What task worth doing isn't worth daily effort? Do you think Michelangelo was having fun the whole time he was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling?

Acting is a grind, just like music is a grind. Sometimes it takes longer than what you can give.

You stand your ground and you perform your art. That's what the artist does. The artist is about perfection.

Art is a jealous mistress.

I believe that - if you are serious about a life of writing, or indeed about any creative form of expression - that you should take on this work like a holy calling.

I have seen no men in life loving their profession so much as painters, except, perhaps, actors, who, when not engaged themselves, always go to the play.

An artist might be attracted to hedonism, but of course an artist is not a hedonist. He's a worker, always.

Creative work carries with it a form of intense love.

Music is a proud, temperamental mistress. Give her the time and attention she deserves, and she is yours. Slight her and there will come a day when you call and she will not answer. So I began sleeping less to give her the time she needed.

A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating.

I belong to the scarce minority of artists who work in good faith, around whom the phenomenal world vanishes, as it happens to the mystics when they give themselves to prayer.

The real payoff is the writing itself, that a day when you have gotten your work done is a good day, that total dedication is the point.

If you're going to be an artist, all life is your subject. And all your experience is part of your art. A youngster told me recently that he was going to give himself a year to see if he has talent. A year! It takes a lifetime to see if you have it. Painting is total engagement.

When you're not writing, you're not doing anything else either because everything you do goes into the writing.

Being an artist doesn’t take much, just everything you got. Which means, of course, that as the process is giving you life, it is also bringing you closer to death. But it’s no big deal. They are one in the same and cannot be avoided or denied. So when I totally embrace this process, this life/death, and abandon myself to it, I transcend all this meaningless gibberish and hang out with the gods. It seems to me that that is worth the price of admission.

The life of an artist is like the life of a monk, a lewd monk if you like, very Rabelaisian. It is an ordination.

The practice of any art demands more than 'mere savoir faire'. One must not only be in love with what one does, one must also know how to make love. In love self is obliterated. Only the beloved counts.