Artistic Toll Quotes

Every one of my books had killed me a little more.

I've directed a couple of times in the theater, but I wouldn't make a habit of it because it's too consuming.

Writing is the one art form that really should allow you to hang yourself.

What's any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What's left of the man when the work's done but a shambles of apology.

If you have this enormous talent, it's got you by the balls, it's a demon. You can't be a family man and a husband and a caring person and be that animal. Dickens wasn't that nice a guy.

The people gave their money and they gave their screams, but the Beatles gave their nervous systems, which is a much more difficult thing to give.

Most things good for writing are bad for life.

The ability to dream is all I have to give. That is my responsibility; that is my burden. And even I grow tired.

Even in a personal sense, after all, art is an intensified life. By art one is more deeply satisfied and more rapidly used up. It engraves on the countenance of its servant the traces of imaginary and intellectual adventures, and even if he has outwardly existed in cloistral tranquility, it leads in the long term to overfastidiousness, over-refinement, nervous fatigue and overstimulation, such as can seldom result from a life of the most extravagant passions and pleasures.

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride; Of him who walked in glory and in joy, Following his plough, along the mountain-side. By our own spirits we are deified; We Poets in our youth begin in gladness, But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

A visual experience is vitalizing. Whereas to write great poetry, to draw continuously on one's inner life, is not merely exhausting, it is to keep alight a consuming fire.

There is rarely a creative man who does not have to pay a high price for the divine spark of his greatest gifts... the human element is frequently bled for the benefit of the creative element and to such an extent that it even brings out the bad qualities, as for instance, ruthless, naive egoism (so-called "auto-eroticism"), vanity, all kinds of vices-and all this in order to bring to the human I at least some life-strength, since otherwise it would perish of sheer inanition.

Oh literature, oh the glorious Art, how it preys upon the marrow in our bones. It scoops the stuffing out of us, and chucks us aside. Alas!

You see so many artists who are so talented end up living sad, empty lives. This industry takes so much out of you that without the accountability and leaving God in the center, you can be left so empty and void.

Photography has been very, very generous to me, but at the same time has damaged me.

My energies get used up quite quickly, and the psychic space I'm in when I write is a very lonely one, so I found that harder and harder to get back to.

An artist spends himself like the crayon in his hand, till he is all gone.

Suicide is the punctuation mark at the end of many artistic careers

The whole chameleon thing about acting. That's why I'm moving towards directing - it's a much more healthy occupation.

Every movie, especially when you get involved... takes something out of you. You learn something, but you give something to the movie. And after the movie, if the experience has been intense and a true experience, you're a little different afterward.

I can't cut off an ear everyday. Do the Van Gogh here and the Mozart there. Anyway it's exhausting enough always having to check up on what one is really doing!.