Creative Intention Quotes

When I listen to a symphony I love, I don't get from it what the composer got. His 'Yes' was different from mine. He could have no concern for mine and no exact conception of it. That answer is too personal to each man. But in giving himself what he wanted, he gave me a great experience.

I don't think we [with Kate DiCamillo] intended to write a book about friendship, I think we intended to write a book about two friends.

If something is a comedy for the sake of just comedy's sake and it doesn't have a good message, I don't have an interest in being part of it. If something is just serious and scary with no good message, I don't want to be a part of it.

Whenever any person in the creative field does a film, they think it is going to be of good quality or this is something people will like. The intention is always positive.

I don't make any distinction between a popular TV series or blockbuster film and doing Shakespeare. They're different, but as long as the material is good and the intention is honourable, it's all the same to me.

A dramatic experience concerned with the mundane may inform but it cannot release; and one concerned essentially with the aesthetic politics of its creators may divert or anger, but it cannot enlighten.

I think that any songwriter - and I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us - you don't write the songs anyhow.

There is no art without intention.

I've always said music should make you laugh, make you cry or make you think.

If you don't like my work in 'The Affair,' that's fine, but I'll stand by the work because I felt that everything that went on camera was what I intended to go on camera.

I often think people don't know what to think of me, and in fact this is precisely the objective of many of my creations. Even back in the days with Lady Starlight, my original partner, we aimed to bemuse. This feeling of bemusement - it's neither good nor bad. It just is. Whether critics realize it or not, they've been in a very long argument since my public birth.

As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of making music is to get it heard by as many people as possible.

These pictures possibly give rise to questions of political content or historical truth. Neither interests me in this instance. And although even my motivation for painting them is probably of no significance, I am trying to put a name to it here, as an articulation, parallel to the pictures, as it were, of my disquiet and of my opinion.

I didn't get into film to win Academy Awards. I wanted to have a conversation with the audience.

I don't go in the studio to make music that won't matter. I go in every night to try to make a point and make the best music that I can make.

Henry James proposed asking of art three modest and appropriate questions: What is the artist trying to do? Does he do it? Was it worth doing?

I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse.

The composer Stravinsky had written a new piece with a difficult violin passage. After it had been in rehearsal for several weeks, the solo violinist came to Stravinsky and said he was sorry, he had tried his best, the passage was too difficult, no violinist could play it. Stravinsky said, 'I understand that. What I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it.'

How can anybody learn anything from an artwork when the piece of art only reflects the vanity of the artist and not reality?

My aim is not to exhibit craft, but rather to submerge it, and make it rightfully the handmaiden of beauty, power and emotional content.

I don't think he (Joseph Albers, fh) ever realized that it was his discipline that I came for. Besides, my response to what I learned from him was just the opposite of what he intended.. ..I was very hesitant about arbitrarily designing forms and selecting colors that would achieve some predetermined result, because I didn't have any ideas to support that sort of thing - I didn't want color to serve me, in other words.

I remember the review from Michael Wilmington in Chicago, and Gene Siskel wrote really smart reviews where I thought, "Oh, they totally get what we're attempting to do."

I feel my work is made for one being, one individual. You could say that's me, but that's not really true. It's for an idealized viewer.

Watching first nights, though I've seen quite a few by now, is never any better. It's a nerve-racking experience. It's not a question of whether the play goes well or badly. It's not the audience reaction, it's my reaction. I'm rather hostile toward audiences—I don't much care for large bodies of people collected together. Everyone knows that audiences vary enormously; it's a mistake to care too much about them. The thing one should be concerned with is whether the performance has expressed what one set out to express in writing the play. It sometimes does.

I don't want to just entertain people. I want to touch them.