Artistic Longing Quotes

I kind of roll my eyes when people say they make music for themselves or they make art just for themselves, because, maybe in their head, what that means is that they're making it for someone who they don't think is real. Their audience isn't real. But it's still a communicative act. It's still an outward manifestation of longing.

I wish I could draw.

Let my life as Poet begin. I want the life of the Poet. I have labored for over twelve years, one thousand pages of prose. Now, I want the easiness of poetry. The brevity of the poem.

I loved being a film executive. But something was always missing for me. I always had the feeling that I was looking over my shoulder - what's going on on Broadway?

'Carousel,' please! I would die to do that.

I only feel, but want the power to paint.

Often while reading a book one feels that the author wouold heave preferred to paint rather than to wirte; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors.

I still haven't played a leading role in cinema or in TV, and that's something that I long for.

I wish I'd made 'Warrior,' and I wish I'd made 'Drive.'

I've done an incredible amount of painters. It's an area, for me, where there's more mystery left. I've photographed so many musicians, I've been in studios so often, I know the whole process. The mystery's gone from it. I think it's important to keep mystery into our lives. There's a longing connected with it.

I'll never live to write all the stories I have in my head.

Music still sort of hangs up there in the sky for me as this thing that moves me so much, but I can't really make it. It's like a car I can't drive.

I'd love to be a pop star - at heart.

If I could sing and play like Lightnin' Hopkins, I would.

Flaubert was right when he said that our use of language is like a cracked kettle on which we bang out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we need to move the very stars to pity.

The only logical thing I can think of is that I knew there were such things as artists, and I knew there were none where I lived. So I knew that to be an artist you had to be somewhere else. And I very much wanted to be somewhere else.

O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books!

Believe me, I wish this song was yours instead of mine.

I wanted so much to come to America and have America hear my music.

Writing is a perpetual choice between a thousand expressions, none of which satisfies me, none of which, above all, satisfies me without the others. Yet I ought to know that only music permits a succession of chords.

I always wanted to write novels, even before I had read a lot of novels or had a very good idea of what they were.

Corny answer is of course is that everyone who wants musicals are children in different ways, aren't they? So you think of them in different ways. There are things of mine I'm sorry haven't come here.

The song I came to sing remains unsung to this day. I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument. The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart . . .

When I'm doing theatre, I prefer to be doing cinema. When I'm doing cinema, I prefer to be doing theatre.