Alison Bechdel Quotes

You learned people and artists have, no doubt, all sorts of superior things in your heads; but you're human beings like the rest of us, and we, too, have our dreams and fancies.

In order to reinvent yourself, you have to dig deep and look at yourself. I'd lost my way creatively, and I was humbled, and so I think I got really basic about wanting to depict people in the ways that I find them amazing and funny and emotional and that I can relate to and do from an instinctive, gut place. People trying to survive ... That's what all my movies are about.

Art is about trying to find the good in people, and making the world a more compassionate place.

A lot of people play to impress, but the really gifted ones play to move. That's the greatest point of ever doing this.

Music, to me, is the most beautiful form, and I love film because film is very related to music. It moves by you in its own rhythm. It's not like reading a book or looking at a painting. It gives you its own time frame, like music, so they are very connected for me. But music to me is the biggest inspiration. When I get depressed, or anything, I go "think of all the music I haven't even heard yet!" So, it's the one thing. Imagine the world without music. Man, just hand me a gun, will you?

It has never been easy for me to understand why people work so hard to create something beautiful, but then refuse to share it with anyone, for fear of criticism.

There is something that might be called cinematic beauty. It can only be expressed in a film, and it must be present for that film to be a moving work. When it is very well expressed, one experiences a particularly deep emotion while watching that film. I believe that it is this quality that draws people to come and see a film, and that it is the hope of attaining this quality that inspires the filmmaker to make his film in the first place.

I love this idea of being able to touch people with something quite familiar, something quite emotional, and at the same time, have the feeling that this is a new way of doing it, a fresh way of showing things. I like radical people. At the same time, I'm fascinated by popularity, people who were able to have huge success and also keep their consistency.

They say that art should stand the test of time. Life lasts a limited amount of time. Mountains and trees and earth will outlive human beings, but we don't know if they will be here always. Art does outlast the life span of its maker. Art should communicate to an increasing circle of strangers-people who do not know the artist, but come to know the work, and through the work, come to know something about the humanity of the artist that rings with their own humanity.

What do artists do? Artists give people something they didn't know they were missing: a dance, a piece of music, a painting, a piece of sculpture. Catering to that need is the best business strategy.

It amazed me how some people could touch an instrument and create something so beautiful, and when others tried, like me, it just sounded like mangled noise.

Art...is the intentional act of using your humanity to create a change in another person...Passion is caring enough about your art that you will do almost anything to give it away, to make it a gift, to change people.

That's just a part of being an artist: you can't write great stuff all the time, because if you did, then you'd be inhuman. The human side of people is that sometimes they fail.

I'm just always making things that are personal but hopefully also inspiring, and share not just my story, but other people's stories.

The most important thing in a piece of music is to seduce people to the point where they start searching.

The only thing that drives music is the people who are making it.

Today it’s economically crucial and personally rewarding to create something that is also beautiful, whimsical, or emotionally engaging.

Creativity is connected to your passion, that light inside you that drives you. . . . Your creativity is not a bad boyfriend. It is a really warm older Hispanic lady who has a beautiful laugh and loves to hug.

Look at the things around you, the immediate world around you. If you are alive, it will mean something to you, and if you care enough about photography, and if you know how to use it, you will want to photograph that meaningness. If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own, you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph.

For me, with me, making a film is always about humanity.

Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.

It seems like there are always gatekeepers. People between you and the people who are moved by your work. They often make a beautiful thing creepy.

Art is whatever makes you proud to be human.

It's not something you can find. There's a moment you arrive at --- there's no words for it. A bunch of people come together at this place where a note hits your heart and your brain tells your finger where to go. It's an otherworldly thing, like when a painter gets the right combination of colors together.

What's great about art is that if you can reach people, if they hear or see what you do and it moves them, there's a commonality.