Henry James Quotes

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

Any art worth its name requires you to be fundamentally lost for a very long time.

Most artists work all the time, they do actually, especially good artists, they work all the time, what else is there to do? I mean you do.

Do not think that I have stopped painting, for at any moment, I am liable to paint a good picture.

When you're not hearing my voice, I'm working on art. So if you're not hearing me, I'm working for the people and getting inspired.

I feel mushy these days when I think about art and artists and the work that lies ahead for us. There's good work to be done and there's joy to be found in it, I think.

I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ relationship is essentially with their work — not with power, not with profit, not with themselves, not even with their audience.

Painting is like having a bad mistress who spends and spends and it's never enough ... I tell myself that even if a tolerable study comes out of it from time to time, it would have been cheaper to buy it from somebody else.

To create anything — whether a short story or a magazine profile or a film or a sitcom — is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic. These essays are about that magic — which is sometimes perilous, sometimes infectious, sometimes fragile, sometimes failed, sometimes infuriating, sometimes triumphant, and sometimes tragic. I went up there. I wrote. I tried to see.

That's the difference between the serious artist and the craftsman--the craftsman can take material and because of his abilities do a professional job of it. The serious artist, like Proust, is like an object caught by a wave and swept to shore. He's obsessed by his material; it's like a venom working in his blood and the art is the antidote.

Some people have been kind enough to call me a fine artist. I've always called myself an illustrator. I'm not sure what the difference is. All I know is that whatever type of work I do, I try to give it my very best. Art has been my life.

Making art, good art, is always a struggle. It can make you happy when you pull it off. There's no better feeling. It's beauteous. But it's always about hard work and inspiration and sweat and good ideas.

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.

Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist.

In my experience a painting is not made with colors and paint at all. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint?

I can concentrate on my art.

We all start in this medium because of the magic and the challenge is to keep it going.

I stay in the studio diligently. I'm always trying to create.

When it comes to art, you just need to be focused on doing a great thing. Not thinking all about the business.

My artistry is my baby.

Our wishes are our most reliable mirror, and the black-and-white movies I'm most drawn to are about artists who suffer because art is a noble thing; suffering is such a small price to pay for the imagination.

When I was in art school, I thought art was something I would learn how to do, and then I would just do it. At a certain point I realized that it wasn't going to work like that. Basically, I would have to start over every day and figure out what art was going to be.