Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments. – Ayn Rand

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it. – John Lennon

If critics say your work stinks it’s because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by scaring you into conformity with their comfortable little standards. Standards so low that they can no longer be considered “dangerous” but set in place in their compartmental understandings. – Jack Kerouac

If critics say your work stinks it’s because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by scaring you into conformity with their comfortable little standards. Standards so low that they can no longer be considered “dangerous” but set in place in their compartmental understandings. – Jack Kerouac

You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never Rises from the soul, and sways The heart of every single hearer, With deepest power, in simple ways. You’ll sit forever, gluing things together, Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps, Blowing on a miserable fire, Made from your heap of dying ash. Let apes and children praise your art, If their admiration’s to your taste, But you’ll never speak from heart to heart, Unless it rises up from your heart’s space. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never
Rises from the soul, and sways
The heart of every single hearer,
With deepest power, in simple ways.
You’ll sit forever, gluing things together,
Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps,
Blowing on a miserable fire,
Made from your heap of dying ash.
Let apes and children praise your art,
If their admiration’s to your taste,
But you’ll never speak from heart to heart,
Unless it rises up from your heart’s space. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It’s a pity one can’t imagine what one can’t compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow. – Vladimir Nabokov

Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure. – George Eliot

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things. – Pablo Picasso

The mystery was gone but the amazement was just starting. – Andy Warhol

I thought clay must feel happy in the good potter’s hand. – Janet Fitch

The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable. – Robert Henri

The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies – Kate Chopin