Creative Solace Quotes

Art should be an oasis: a place or refuge from the hardness of life.

I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.

Life can be challenging and sad... but music is the easy part.

Wherever I go with my life, even the good times and the bad parts, only two people are with me: God and my music.

A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires.

It's true that it's a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.

Music has been my everything since day one. It's been my shoulder to cry on, my rock and my best friend.

Brian Eno records and music got me through. It made me feel like there were other people out there who had the same questions and fears and unhappiness. Particularly those kinds of artists who were writing songs about exactly those things.

Fiction, poetry, music...these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.

Life is so horrible that one can only bear it by avoiding it. And that can be done by living in the world of art.

Art is man's refuge from adversity.

Most of the artists I know are crazy in one way or another. I think that's why you get into it. You're in pursuit of a certain sort of peace that's very, very, very difficult to come by.

Writing is my vacation from living.

I am not a religious person, nor do I have any regrets. The war took care of that for me. You know, I was brought up strictly kosher, but I - it made no sense to me. It made no sense to me what was happening. So nothing of it means anything to me. Nothing. Except these few little trivial things that are related to being Jewish. ... You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson - she's probably the top - Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life.

Music has always been my protection against the world, from a very young age. I feel safe inside of a jam.

To me, having 500 rolls of fabric around is the most calming thing in the world. I think it's what football is to some guys.

The creative consequences of man's imaginative strivings may never make him whole; but they constitute his deepest consolations and his greatest glories.

When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.

I think art is a healing force, and if we give in to the joy that can be found in art, then we are able to sustain ourselves in spite of ourselves.

When I was about seven, one or two people encouraged me, and art became an enormous and important refuge. By adolescence, I was absolutely passionate about it and felt those paintings and those painters, whether they lived a few hundred years ago or were still alive, were somehow my companions.

Art has always been my salvation.

I write music, really, to make myself feel better.

I couldn't help but feel very different from everybody, so I think that's why I found such a big world in music, and that's why I kind of - I was an introvert as a kid, but I loved the piano, and that's where I felt at home.

I found a comfort in trying to solve some poetic problems because there were human ones I just couldn't solve.