Vance Packard Quotes

The greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.

Many have genius, but, wanting art, are forever dumb. The two must go together to form the great poet, painter, or sculptor.

I'm always in awe of people who are artists in their fields - people who understand that simply by taking ideas and translating them into reality, they've created value in the world.

Art is about play and about transcendent meanings, not reducible to politics.

Artists and writers have to deal with the element that makes the real real and the dream real while you are dreaming it. That's where stories and poems get their power.

Poets are born, not paid.

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

Symbolism and meaning are two separate things. I think she found the right words by bypassing procedures like meaning and logic. She captured words in a dream, like delicately catching hold of a butterfly’s wings as it flutters around. Artists are those who can evade the verbose.

You may be perfect in playing the piano, and not be creative; you may play the piano most brilliantly, and not be a musician. You may be able to handle color, to put paint on canvas most cleverly, and not be a creative painter. You may create a face, an image out of a stone, because you have learned the technique, and not be a master creator. Creation comes first, not technique.

The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him. All our faculties keep us within the realm of the real, of what is already there. The most we can do is to combine things or break them up. The metaphor alone furnishes an escape; between the real things, it lets emerge imaginary reefs, a crop of floating islands.

All children have creative power.

A great artist is a great man in a great child.

Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare.

Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.

Of course creativity is a mystery. We don't know what drives it or what constitutes it. It's one of those things, like genius, you know it when you see it but it's impossible to define.

I love creative people.

Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.

The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

Art is not in some far-off place. A work of art is the expression of a man's whole personality, sensibility and ability.

I try not to be overly literal. When I'm writing songs, I write down a lot of words, and then I try to simplify it. I like to give people hints or words that make visual pictures for them.

My secrets must be poetic to be believable.

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.

A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.