Robert Henri Quotes

If you've done a brilliant version it becomes something else.

Talent works, genius creates.

He lives with his creativity in high gear.

Some of us have great original ideas and some of us depend on adaptations.

Some people would say my paintings show a future world and maybe they do, but I paint from reality. I put several things and ideas together, and perhaps, when I have finished, it could show the future.

I never look at other people's work. My mind has to be completely focused on my own illusions.

Why should the composer be more guilty than the poet who warms to fantasy by a strange flame, making an idea that inspires him the subject of his own very different treatment?

One day I had an idea for a movie. Everything came after that.

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

Most of us don't invent ideas. We take the best ideas from someone else.

Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes all the difference in art.

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

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.

Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.

I think we always move from imitation to assimilation to innovation, but I can't name you 20 people outside those we've already recognized who ever got to point three: innovation.

I actually don't have a great surplus of ideas. Some evolve very slowly, over many years, but I sort of trust that all of the interesting ones will become something that I eventually end up doing.

As I get on and films take four years to complete, I tend to have a hankering for very short projects so you can move on to the next idea. It's the ideas I'm interested in. What comes out of your head.

When starting a project, your influences are the things around you. It doesn't mean you have to sound like it or look like it or anything. It's just something new, and your curiosity becomes enthralled by it.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

That's the buzz for me, the creative process. An idea is never as good as when it's in your head. And then it's just how little you ruin it.

I've worked with people who wanted to be creative every day: it was like a goal to arrive with something very special. Sometimes it's just disturbing, because special is good when it's needed. But when it's not needed, it's confusing, and you go away from the authenticity by a strong desire to be unique and singular.

There's nothing new, even 'new' is inspired by something. We're all, either consciously or unconsciously, we're inspired.

When I take from my influences, it's rare that I do it literally.

Good films that get made are so few and far between. I want to write and direct more, but only so I can keep a fresh perspective.