Artistic Destiny Quotes

Actually, I didn't take up acting. Rather, acting chose me.

As an English major I was familiar with the stories of dozens of writers trying to get their work done among the multifarious diversions of the world and the hurdles of their own vices. A professor had said that what saved writers is that they, like politicians, had the illusion of destiny that allowed them to overcome obstacles no matter how nominal their work.

It was clear from the beginning that I was going to be a musician.

Being a musician is a given for me-I didn't have much choice in the matter.

...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.

The modern artist, by nature and destiny, is always an individualist.

For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential - the imagination.

Herman Melville was supposed to be an accountant. Van Gogh was meant to be an art dealer. I was meant to take the train into New York and work for a bank. To be an artist, you have to say goodbye to your family.

Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside

Nobody in the world could have told me I wasn't gonna be a rapper. So, yeah, I always knew I was gonna be one.

Once an object has been incorporated in a picture it accepts a new destiny.

The idea of a talent that was bigger than an artist's ability to choose to use it, that would dictate the artist's life more than the artist could dictate, was interesting to me.

My mother encouraged me to be artistic. It was written in a contract at an early age that I would be an artist.

People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life.

I was born to make movies.

I don't have any other skills. Some artists say that to mean that their embodied passion for art gave them no choice. I say it, very specifically, to say that I really didn't have any other options.

Batty as it sounds, subject and style may choose artists, through some unfathomable cosmic means. How else to explain that even artists who enjoy what they do can be perplexed or even horrified that they're doing it?

I did everything I could to not be a musician.

We entered 'Lucid Grey' into the Georgetown festival on April 27, 2001. Now 'Sound of My Voice' is opening on April 27, 11 years later. It couldn't have happened in a more perfectly cinematic way.

Honestly, I feel the films choose me rather than I go after them!

I just assumed that if you were a girl-child, you were supposed to grow up and write.

I was meant to be a composer and will be I'm sure. Don't ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football - please.