Anna Sui Quotes

I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere.

You don't get inspiration sitting at a drawing board or in front of your computer.

I get ideas from everywhere: movies, books, movies, nature - it comes into my brain, it sits there for a while, and it starts coming back out.

People always ask what my inspiration is, and it's never something that's easily explained.

You can't make either life or art, you have to work in the hole in between, which is undefined. That's what makes the adventure of painting.

I have my permanent muses and my muses of the moment.

I'm very interested to see how this new painting will go - I know I want it big and stark, and as I said, I follow the muse, and that's when it always works perfectly for me.

I'm grateful to have the chance to be inspired by the incredible artists that are out there.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

Artwork is not like a commercial business; there is no such thing as a schedule for art. You can't hurry art.

When I got my first loft, I still didn't know what I was going to paint... There were long stretches when I just sat there and thought without interruption.

I get inspired at different times and in different ways.

I'm a happy camper when I'm doing both: writing and art every day, along with a dose of reading and adventures into what else is being done by other artists/writers and poets. Like breathing. I've written poems or fictions to go with a painting. The source for the inspiration of the art often eludes me.

A lot of times, I don't feel responsible for the songs myself. But that's my job or my place in life: to keep my search and catch the ideas before they pass me by.

For me, drawing generates thinking and vice versa.

Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors.

I live in Rome and five minutes from my flat is a church where you can walk in and see this beautiful Caravaggio. Just the way this man uses dark paint: dark to create dark to create dark, the layering of the darkness in his work. I just race home: I want to create!

Lyrics are coming to you all the time. I get inspiration in the middle of the night.

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.

I think of my peace paintings as one long poem, with each painting being a single stanza.

In my experience a painting is not made with colors and paint at all. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint?

My writing is inspired by just about everything, yet I am unaware of so much of the process.

People ask me, 'What's your next film?' And I never know.

Inspiration takes many forms, but it's rarely pure.

I find a lot of inspiration through visuals. When I was 12, I saw Aurora's 'Runaway' music video. Something inside me clicked, like, 'That is what I want to do, no matter whether it goes anywhere or not.'