“But the way I developed my style, really, was getting bored. I would be in a nightclub and play for four hours, and you sing the song like somebody - the guy that wrote it or the guy that sang it. And I got tired of that. So I started changing the rhythms and maybe giving it a heavier beat, and just…”— Waylon Jennings, npr.org
“One does not think during creative work any more than one thinks when driving a car. But one has a background of years – learning, unlearning, success, failure, dreaming, thinking, experience, all this – then the moment of creation, the focusing of all into the moment.”— Edward Weston, amazon.com
“I find it so much easier to be creatively free at night. Daytime is for sleeping. Nighttime is the best time for making art. The later at night it gets the further into another world you go.”— Mark Ryden, markryden.com
“Change will lead to insight far more often than insight will lead to change.”— Milton H. Erickson, ericksonmuseum.org
“Research indicates that OCD sufferers often exhibit high creativity and imagination and above-average intelligence.”— Annabella Hagen, psychcentral.com
“When you love something, you want to do it all the time, even if no one is paying you for it. At least that's how I felt about drawing.”— Meg Cabot, amazon.com
“It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.”— Stephen King, amazon.com
“I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my life. Some of them. Not all.”— Neil Gaiman, amazon.com
“If it weren't for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no Van Gough, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong.”— Jasper Fforde, amazon.com
“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty…”— W. Somerset Maugham, amazon.com
“Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art.”— Miguel Ruiz, amazon.com
“I do not know anything about Art with a capital A. What I do know about is my art. Because it concerns me. I do not speak for others. So I do not speak for things which profess to speak for others. My art, however, speaks for me. It lights my way.”— Mark Z. Danielewski, amazon.com
“Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.”— Flannery O'Connor, amazon.com
“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do i…”— Kurt Vonnegut, amazon.com
“You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.”— George Bernard Shaw, amazon.com
“An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.”— J.D. Salinger, amazon.com
“He took his pain and turned it into something beautiful. Into something that people connect to. And that's what good music does. It speaks to you. It changes you.”— Hannah Harrington, amazon.com