Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Quotes

Making art has never been a mystery to me. It's never been something that's very difficult.

I don't really believe in writer's block or anything like that. If I'm not feeling words, I may pick up an instrument and play with sounds or delve into different types of creativity and expression.

I'm very interested to see how this new painting will go - I know I want it big and stark, and as I said, I follow the muse, and that's when it always works perfectly for me.

I think of a piece, and then people who are competent fabricate it. But lately I've started finger painting, which probably should be a joke but isn't!

The only thing in life that really gives me any peace is just being lost in the process of creating something, whether it's the film or painting and drawing, which has been a big part of my life, for a long time.

I was trying to be a writer, and I was kind of getting sidetracked, so I started doing cartoons as a form of expression.

I write based on powerful inner impulses, and those seem to shift over time.

I really understand what that process is all about and how important it is, especially with young folk and creative folk that love looking for some platform that makes it easier for them to express themselves.

Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works.

I feel constricted if I become too much aware of the act of making. Liberty is lost and instead of an instinctual lyrical expression the whole thing becomes arid.

I really like writing poetry and lyrics because it's one thing where I give up control. I don't feel like I need to be in control of it. I just sort of let it happen, and then I know when it's done. I know when it's finished.

I base everything on my instinctual approach. There's something very satisfying in that creativity, and it's a bit like an infant drawing.

Whatever I ended up picking or choosing was always going to be a creative outlet for me.

I'm finding that writing poetry is strengthening my songwriting, because you're learning to make a piece of writing work on a page with nothing else. I was also finding within poetry I felt a lot more free to write about very different matters, to write about social issues or things that are going on around me.

I continue to write. It's just one of those things that I do. I'll have periods when I write and periods when I don't. But you don't want it to become a discipline really. If it becomes a discipline, it becomes a chore and that's no good.

The moment we live in is a great time to make art. We have different technologies to play with, and we're left with the opportunity to focus on our work.

I try not to take on the weight or the burden of it. Once it's on the paper, I try to leave it, because I want to surrender to what I'm supposed to write about.

As an artist, you have the job of working out whatever is given you to work out.

Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow - whether there is a market for it or not! The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don't show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward.

When you write a novel or paint a picture, you have the opportunity to approach it and back off, tear up pages, write, rewrite, paint over, and come back to it. In film, once you start shooting, you can't restart the clock, and you keep moving forward, and you don't look back, and you don't go back. And that is, of course, antithetical to the creative process. It's really hard to generate a comfortable creative flow under that kind of pressure.

The real artist while he paints does not think of the sale, only of the need to make a beautiful living thing.

Usually I draw in relation to my painting, what I am working on at the time. On a lucky day a surprising balance of forms and spaces will appear... making itself, the image taking hold. This in turn moves me toward painting - anxious to get to the same place, with the actuality of paint and light.

I come alive when I'm painting. I like to work in oils and acrylics, and the full sensory engagement and self-expression is very stimulating to me.

I believe that what we want to write wants to be written. I believe that as I have an impulse to create, the something I want to create has an impulse to want to be born. My job, then, is to show up on the page and let that something move through me, in a sense, what wants to be written is none of my business.

I worked at Disney many years ago. They just let me sit in a room for a couple of years and draw whatever I wanted to draw, so it's a very personal thing to me. Drawing and everything you do there is something meaningful and personal.