Sarah Kay Quotes

I spend my time trying to figure art out. I was brought up to believe that the way one processes information is by making it into art. That's how I live my life.

I write poetry to figure things out. Any time I’m trying to wrap my head around something, poetry is like a puzzle-solving strategy for me.

I've worked with collage a lot. And there's this chance thing that happens - you don't always control things. Why did you find this today and not this? But you've got this thing, and you make it work. It's the way life is, I suppose. Whatever happens, you deal with it.

No good poem, however confessional it may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster?

There are two things in the painter, the eye and the mind; each of them should aid the other.

Writing is mentally stimulating; it's like a puzzle that makes you think all the time.

The great poems are not about experience, but are the experience itself, felt in the body.

My idea about the role of artists is to get people to look at things in a way that's different than the way they normally would if they are being told how to think, what to do. I think when people receive information through art, they are more open-minded.

The key to good art is to make something that means something to you.

I think it is really important to not only take advantage of these tools that you have at your disposal but also to really take the time to develop ideas within yourself and think about what you want to animate, and then you can use these tools to create what you want to create.

Hacking involves a different way of looking at problems that no one's thought of.

I think what really stays with me is the idea that you can write music about the texture of a wall, and everything is in some way connected.

I give people ideas on how to solve intractable problems.

Poetry is a kind of distilled insinuation. It's a way of expanding and talking around an idea or a question. Sometimes, more actually gets said through such a technique than a full frontal assault.

Writing is a way of life. I do it because it's a way of experiencing the world, and trying to come to terms with it and understand it and express it and engage with it. And to me it's a natural extension of reading.

Poems have ideas. The ideas of poems come out of their emotions and their emotions are carried on images.

I often try to think about, What sounds like a bad idea, but if you find the right plan of attack, it's actually a really good idea? I spend a lot of time really trying to systematically tackle problems from different angles.

I do these records. All of these ideas that I have, that I put out there, that inspire me to write, are a purging in a lot of ways. I have to expel them in order for myself to walk around and actually smile and be a regular, or a living, person.

The way an actor is trained doesn't ultimately have much bearing on my work. I'm interested in the actor as artist.

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

I don't practice anything. I spend time looking over ideas and then just get out and do it.

But what's a writer for? The whole point is to put yourself into other lives, other heads-writers have always done that. If you screw up, so someone will tell you, that's all.

Cinema is a medium that can translate ideas. But wood can translate ideas, too. You have wood and then you get a chair. Some ideas are for different things.

The way you survive in the performing arts is by having a sense of your audience, and doing things which entertain and satisfy the audience, but in a more important way, cause the audience to question many things.

Best to say that once a poem is finished I trust it to make its way, and I trust readers will find their way to it and through it, if the thing has got itself rightly expressed.