Artistic Breakthrough Quotes

I was part of the generation that pushed the Internet. In fact, I broke as an artist in the U.S.A. because of the Internet.

I had no idea 'The Dream Weaver' would be so successful. Everything just fell into place with that album. I pioneered a number of ideas with that album and subsequent tour. The all-keyboard approach with no guitars was a new one, and I was one of the first to use a drum machine in concert. It was an amazing time.

I didn't go through the routine of singing in small clubs and doing open mics and working so hard the way a lot of people do and did. It was just an overnight kind of thing.

There's nothing like the eureka moment of knocking off a song that didn't exist before - I won't compare it to sex, but it lasts longer.

I went to the studio, and I freestyled 'Beautiful' in, like, an hour and a half, and I threw it up, and people were like, 'This song's gonna change your life.'

Your first book is the only one that matters. Perhaps a writer should write only that one. That is the one moment when you make the big leap; the opportunity to express yourself is offered that once, and you untie the knot within you then or never again.

'Pink' is the turning point in my career. It just changed everything for me overnight.

I had this instinct and I just knew it. It was a very strange thing and as soon as I finished recording it, we were all in the studio saying we have something really special here.

I was going to be a chemical engineer - I was a science nerd - that was the plan. I secretly applied to USC and NYU and got a scholarship to go to NYU based on a dumb animated short I made. It was a huge shock to me and my family.

The whole world is pretending the breakthrough is in technology. The bottleneck is really in art.

All poets have signalized their consciousness of rare moments when they were superior to themselves, -when a light, a freedom, a power came to them which lifted them to performances far better than they could reach at other times.

I Got Rhythm really put me on the map.

I just started writing and writing for people. And then, like I guess after (a) year of getting some placements, I kinda got a shot to be an artist. Long story short I think, yeah.

The great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.

When the opportunity to choreograph came up, it was nothing more in my head but an opportunity. Then it suddenly became a career very quickly.

Intellectually, perspective [drawing] is a breakthrough, because here, for the first time, the physical space we live in is being depicted as ifit were an abstract, mathematical space. A less obvious innovation due to perspective is that here, for the first time, people are actually drawing pictures of infinities.

I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That's when I was born.

When the chord of monotony is stretched to its tightest, it breaks with the sound of a song.

I remember when 'I'm Moving On' came out, and we got the response we did, I thought, 'Man, this could be for real.' That was the first time it dawned on me what we had.

In painting, you can suddenly come upon something so huge that no-one can deal with it.

There have been countless changes in the long history of art. The most significant have been brought about by the genius of a single artist.

Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.

I don't think I have had a big break, although joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1986 opened up new horizons.

It's one thing to just play a tune, or play a program of music, but it's another thing to practically create a new language of music, which is what 'Kind of Blue' did.

I had to live on $17,000 a year until I was 33, because I was a failed artist until I was 29, when I made my first short film that went to Sundance.