When I draw something, the incredibly annoying thing is that it doesn't come out like I pictured.
Whenever I see a Frans Hals I feel like painting, but when I see a Rembrandt I feel like giving up!
Cheever constantly voiced doubts about his writing. Reading 'The Naked and the Dead' made him despair of his own 'confined talents.'
I come from a family of lawyers. I was expected to be a professional of some sort, not an artist. I was never uplifted for my art.
Many artists give up after a while.
You want to know how I think art should be taught to children? Take them to a museum and say, 'This is art, and you can't do it.
I am a failed visual artist.
I have a theory about that, if you have to say something, if you have encourage for one second a prospective acting student - he should not go in to acting.
It always makes me sad when I think of how I saw Wagner wasting his vitality, not only by singing their parts to some of his artists, but acting out the smallest details, and of how few they were who were responsive to his wishes.
No, I didn't become disenchanted. I just couldn't paint like them.
New York is not conductive to theater. New York does not encourage its young. It does not encourage experimentation.
I've had times in the past where I wanted to give up acting, get my head out of the arts because it was like my constitution couldn't deal with it. My job means I get judged on my looks; I get discriminated against because of my sex; I take on roles that are so two-dimensional... you can go mad trying to fill that third dimension.
People have these incredible expectations. So instead of being inspired by, say, Joni Mitchell's music, I look at it and say to myself, 'I'm going to quit - why would I think of writing or performing after listening to that?'
You were probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid - things you liked - on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that. Is that right? Don’t do music. You’re not going to be a musician. Don’t do art. You're not going to be an artist - benign advice, now profoundly mistaken.
I really don't want to encourage young writers. Keep them down and out and silent is my motto.
