Edward Ruscha Quotes

I wasn't really into music. I was into the streets. I was too worried about the streets and how I was going to eat and how I was going to make the streets happen.

When I first came out, I was a film student, and my mom sewed clothes. I was already doing a million things then, whatever it took to survive. If I had to braid someone's hair to get one pound for my lunch money, that's what I did.

It's that anonymous person who meanders through the streets and feels what's happening there, feels the pulse of the people, who's able to create.

I grew up around New York, graffiti culture.

I talk about things that real street cats can relate to.

I know how difficult it is to make a career in the arts, but even if you don't make a career of it, don't lose it as a hobby. Artists often end up in jobs that have nothing to do with their art. But that side needs to be fulfilled - don't give it up.

I don't understand how people live without creating.

I find it painful when I'm without anything. But I work in multiple fields. If I can't write, I find myself taking photographs. I can go on the road and perform. But the most important thing for me is writing, and when I hit those walls, it's painful.

I always wanted to experience the street life because my teenage life in Aberdeen was so boring. But I was never really independent enough to do it. I applied for food stamps, lived under the bridge, and built a fort at the cedar mill.

I didn't do so well in the academic world, so I think the only way I could express myself was through visual art - anything I could get my hands on, whether it was glassblowing, sculpture, painting, or photography. I always wanted to be a painter. Or a farmer.

I knew that I always wanted to keep making music, but I knew that comics needed to be a part of my life.

I've always been an all around creative person. Song writing and writing are great ways for me to express myself.

Artists are better at finding a way to kill their time.

If we want to make meaning, we need to make art. Cook, write, draw, doodle, paint, scrapbook, take pictures, collage, knit, rebuild an engine, sculpt, dance, decorate, act, sing - it doesn't matter. As long as we're creating, we're cultivating meaning.

Creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.

As a street artist, I'm used to sharing my stuff with the public. It's a communal experience. I've learned not to be so precious, but rather to enjoy the process.

I think doing something creative is the most important thing to me, and I think it's probably just good for the soul for anyone, whatever it is. You don't have to be a film director - you can do gardening or something - but I think everyone needs to create something.

I am more alive in the theater than anywhere else, but what I take into the theater I get from the streets.

Surrealism runs through the streets.

I come fresh from the street, fast on my feet, kind a lean and lazy; not much meat on my bones, and a whole lot alone, and more than a little bit crazy. The old six string was all I had to keep my belly still, and for each full hour lesson I gave I got a crisp ten dollar bill.

Acting is just another way to express myself as an artist. I realized if you're an artist, you're an artist and you can express that through music, through painting, through photography, through acting - this is just another way for me to express myself.

A lot of my friends do creative things and are doing really well at what they do - some writers, some artists. I'm in a driven circle. I've had a lot of opportunities that other people wouldn't necessarily have and seen some cool places.

I was loving music, and loving art, painting, so I was considering those things, but I must say I dug acting as well.

Nearly everybody in San Francisco writes poetry. Few San Franciscans would admit this, but most of them would rather like to have their productions accidentally discovered.

Yet he saw that in all places there was originality, resulting from the human efforts at decoration and ingenious methods of survival.