Artistic Imperfection Quotes

That's just a part of being an artist: you can't write great stuff all the time, because if you did, then you'd be inhuman. The human side of people is that sometimes they fail.

If they who understand the utmost refinement of any art will enjoy the perfection of it in a manner superior to other men, will they not amply pay for that advantage in feeling more than other men the imperfection of it, which in the natural course of things must so much oftener fall in their way?

I believe that perfection handicaps cinema.

Where there are many beauties in a poem I shall not cavil at a few faults proceeding either from negligence or from the imperfection of our nature.

There's a Nina Simone record that I love, 'Live at Vine Street,' and she sings flat on it. I can imagine she might've told the record label, 'Oh, God, you're not releasing that!' But I'm glad they did.

The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.

With a novel, which takes perhaps years to write, the author is not the same man he was at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. It is not only that his characters have developed-he has developed with them, and this nearly always gives a sense of roughness to the work: a novel can seldom have the sense of perfection which you find in Chekhov's story, The Lady with the Dog.

Regularity, order, desire for perfection destroy art. Irregularity is the basis of all art.

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

Just because I make something doesn't mean that it's going to be amazing, and most creative people don't like to admit when their music is just okay.

Perfection bores me, in art, in music; most of all, in people. Luckily, perfection is rare.

There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair.

We attempted perfection; we wanted an object to be without flaw, so we cut the papers with a razor, pasted them down meticulously, but it buckled and was ruined... that is why we decided to tear prewrinkled paper, so that in the finished work of art imperfection would be an integral part, as if at birth death were built in.

Writing's a lot like cooking. Sometimes the cake won't rise, no matter what you do, and every now and again the cake tastes better than you ever could have dreamed it would.

Perhaps the most serious complaint you could make about Bach is that he has every quality of humanity except imperfection.

No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.

Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.

A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth.

The artist alone among men knows what true humility means. His reach forever exceeds his grasp. He can never be satisfied with his work. He knows when he has done well, but he knows he has never attained his dream. He knows he never can.

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

The story is always better than your ability to write it. My belief about this is that if you ever get to the point that you think you've done a story justice, you're in the wrong business.

Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue.

At this moment, the story in his head was perfect. He also knew from experience that it would degenerate the second he started typing, because such was the nature of writing.

The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.

Great art is never perfect; perfect art is never great.