Lawrence Halprin Quotes

Intelligence is not creative; judgment is not creative. If a sculptor is nothing but skill and mind, his hands will be without genius.

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.

He lives with his creativity in high gear.

I shy away from the word 'creation.' In the ordinary, social meaning of the word - well, it's very nice, but fundamentally, I don't believe in the creative function of the artist. He's a man like any other.

Every picture has its own demands, and every picture stimulates something within you to tell it a certain way. I don't know what that is; I don't think too much about that.

I always feel like the art's there and I just see it, so it's not really a lot of work.

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

You know a trillion times more about art than me. But I’ve learned that it isn’t necessary to know all that much. You just make what you wanna see, right? It’s a game, right? It’s like being paid for dreaming.

Indeed, an engineer designing a structure is not unlike an artist painting one. Both start with nothing but talent, experience, and inspiration. The fresh piece of paper on the drawing board is as blank as the newly stretched piece of canvas.

I start a picture and I finish it.

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.

Art is something you can't teach, but you can inspire it.

I'm dependent on writing for a living, so really it's to my advantage to understand how the creative process works. One of the problems is, when you start to do that, in effect you're going to have to step off the edge of science and rationality.

Designing came to me. I didn't have to move.

Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art.

I consider creativity to be a more non-rational, subconscious thing. You have a relationship to your creativity - you can feed it with content, with some rational prodding and sleep and things like that, but the mechanisms by which your creativity work are largely unknown.

When a designer creates, he looks at the world around him.

The artist's job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn't damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.

I have admired David Bromley's work for years. He possesses such a wild and vivid imagination and really sees the beauty in everything.

Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why.

Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite - getting something down.

Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything.

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

To give a body and a perfect form to one's thought, this - and only this - is to be an artist.