Aubrey Beardsley Quotes

An amateur may not be an artist, though an artist should be an amateur.

An artist's flair is sometimes worth a scientist's brains.

If an artist may say nothing except what he has invented by his own sole efforts, it stands to reason he will be poor in ideas. If he could take what he wants wherever he could find it, as Euripides and Dante and Michelangelo and Shakespeare and Bach were free, his larder would always be full, and his cookery might be worth tasting.

Genre expectations can kill creativity. If you do something different, it will get hated. The best filmmakers can do everything on the approval list and knock it out of the park. For me, I have a hard time being creative when I have to color in between the lines.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

In art, theories are as useful as a doctor's prescription; one must be sick to believe them.

No doubt the artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite.

There's no room for being a visionary in the studio system. It literally cannot exist.

If you're always thinking about someone else's work, about the tradition you're working in, how can you possibly make anything good?

Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.

Always think that in any area of the arts, you get maybe ten percent of people who are creative, original... and the rest are generally following on, copying.

I'm a creator at heart.

You have to be creative. It's the basics. You can't be Picasso unless you know how to draw a real face; then you can turn it upside down.

If you want to be an artist in the long run, it isn't necessarily a good axiom to repeat formulas over and over until they're used up.

As an artist, you find at different times you want to do different things.

The only intention I've ever had creatively, as a musician, is to be as different from myself as possible.

The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.

... everyone's free to embark on either a great clipper or a little fishing boat. An artist is an explorer who oughtn't to shrink from anything: it doesn't matter whether he goes to the left or the right -- his goal sanctifies all.

No artist is normal. Who happen to be normal cannot be an artist.

Why not do something strange and different for once? Artists can do whatever they want!

Real artists, it seems to me, are those who don't repeat themselves.

A big enough artist, I say, can eat anything, must eat everything and then alchemize it. Only the feeble writer is afraid of expansion.

If you're not allowed to experiment anymore for fear of being considered self-indulgent or pretentious or what have you, then everyone's going to just stick to the rules - there's not going to be any additional ideas.