Maria Semple Quotes

Every good picture leaves the painter eager to start again, unsatisfied, inspired by the rich mine in which he is working, hoping for more energy, more vitality, more time - condemned to painting for life.

People who are artists professionally are not artists because they want to be artists; they have to be artists. They're compelled to get that creativity out and to share that with others.

For every artist, experience is never complete until it has been reproduced in creative work.

Often, especially young artists, you feel like you should be doing something. And I think that can be very destructive because creativity is about connecting with the stuff that's deep inside you and making something out of that.

Well, something must be done for May, The time is drawing nigh-- To figure in the Catalogue, And woo the public eye. Something I must invent and paint; But oh my wit is not Like one of those kind substantives That answer Who and What?

I think there's a deep impulse in most humans to do creative stuff, whether that's music or art, photography or writing. Most people at some point in their life say they want to do something creative - they want to be an actor, a director, a writer, a poet, a painter or whatever.

I've gone seventy-nine hours without sleep, creating. When that flow is going, it's almost like a high. You don't want it to stop. You don't want to go to sleep for fear of missing something.

When I think about how I want to reach an audience, I just wanted to make pieces that were inspired by something that gave me so much pleasure.

It's hard to predict and to say what goes on inside the minds of an artist, but that's what makes them an artist. That sense of creativity. That thing that makes them tick is probably the very thing that pushes them to the extremes that sometimes can cause, you know, fatalities and things that, you know, that end up not being good.

I genuinely find the most meaningful thing I do is to make music, but also to absorb some sort of creativity.

I can't cut off an ear everyday. Do the Van Gogh here and the Mozart there. Anyway it's exhausting enough always having to check up on what one is really doing!.

For a film to be viable, it has to survive this process of scrutiny. I think most filmmakers have obsessive-compulsive tendencies and would be completely unemployable in any other job - so it's great to be able to channel your psychological anomalies into something productive and creative.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making.

Creation is a drug I can't do without.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

I think therapy interferes with the creative process. It takes off the edge.

All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

I could never even entertain the notion that it's an option, to not be an artist.

I wanted to translate from one flat surface to another. In fact, my learning disabilities controlled a lot of things. I don't recognize faces, so I'm sure it's what drove me to portraits in the first place.

There are times when I've inhaled my work. There are artworks still inside of me.

Created stuff is meant to be shared. That’s why the creative person created it. Why else do creative people exist?

Many artists, when they are creating art, are searching for a vehicle that can manifest a feeling they have inside of themselves.

I think a lot of creative people are uncomfortable with therapy. Because you're basically trying to 'solve' the unconscious. And the unconscious is where it all comes from.

The curse of being a songwriter is that's you're always at work. I could look out the window right now and see something that would make me want to write.