Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself. – Robert Henri
When there is no freedom, there is no creativity. – Soud Qbeilat
You are born an artist or you are not. And you stay an artist, dear, even if your voice is less of a fireworks. The artist is always there. – Maria Callas
Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea. – John Ciardi
What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who only has eyes, if he is a painter, or ears if he is a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he is a poet, or even, if he is a boxer, just his muscles? Far from it: at the same time he is also a political being, constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people, and with a cool indifference to detach yourself from the very life which they bring to you so abundantly? No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war. – Pablo Picasso
She was never going to seek gainful employment again, that was for certain. She’d remain outside the public sector. She’d be an anarchist, she’d travel with jaguars. She was going to train herself to be totally irrational. She’d fall in love with a totally inappropriate person. She’d really work on it, but abandon would be involved as well. She’d have different names, a.k.a. Snake, a.k.a. Snow – no that was juvenile. She wanted to be extraordinary, to possess a savage glitter. – Joy Williams
A deliberate plan is not always necessary for the highest art; it emerges. – Paul Johnson
A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. – Albert Camus
Art is my life and my life is art. – Yoko Ono
The White House usually followed the seagull theory of management: fly in, squawk and flap and shit, and fly away. – John Frohnmayer
Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflected the landscape. And yet … and yet …
Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things you might think they would want to escape from — hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in. He was fascinated. – Terry Pratchett
The first demand any work of art makes upon us is to surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.
-An Experiment in Criticism – C.S. Lewis
