Artistic Disappointment Quotes

Beijing is constructing a 100,000 m2 modern art museum, yet it will not feature any of my work.

I sometimes feel that the world is a very uncivilised place where it is meant to be at its most civilised. Where it's meant to be intellectual or artistic or compassionate, it isn't, and that makes me very angry.

After every movie, I always kick myself for the same things-didn't do enough, not enough variation, not enough interesting choices, too bland.

To write is to pour one’s innermost self passionately upon the tempting paper, at such frantic speed that sometimes one’s hand struggles and rebels, overdriven by the impatient god which guides it - and to find, next day, in place of the golden bough that bloomed miraculously in that dazzling hour, a withered bramble and a stunted flower.

The more congenial page of some tenth-rate poeticule worn out with failure after failure and now squat in his hole like the tailless fox, he is curled up to snarl and whimper beneath the inaccessible vine of song.

When you expect anything from music, you expect too much.

There will always be times where you think, 'What went wrong? Why wasn't that one more popular?' You can't always figure that out, especially if you think you've done the best job you can do and was interesting to you. I mean, 'My Soul to Take,' I thought should have done much better, and I still like that film a lot.

A moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art. The promise of it is felt in the act of creation but disappears towards the completion of the work. For it is then the painter realises that it is only a picture he is painting. Until then he had almost dared to hope the picture might spring to life.

Many artists give up after a while.

For me, utter failure is to make a film that people pay their money to go see and they don't like.

It's frightening for one artist to see another one, any other one turn away from art.

One of the biggest, and possibly the biggest, obstacle to becoming a writer... is learning to live with the fact that the wonderful story in your head is infinitely better, truer, more moving, more fascinating, more perceptive, than anything you're going to manage to get down on paper.

Actually, my career as a music director turned out to be a disappointment. I believed I gave good songs but the response and recognition from the industry was not great.

I've listened to a lot of outside stuff and just haven't really heard anything that moves me. I don't know if I'm getting old and crotchety or what.

'All Our Yesterdays' was unquestionably the best work I have ever done. And the reading public stayed away in droves.

I can cook, but I also want everything to look beautiful on the plate - then I get upset when people eat it. Everyone just tears through it, and that makes me sad. It's not a rewarding experience for me to cook.

The Louvre is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends.

Nobody ever starts out to make a mediocre, commercial film. You always think it's going to be something. And then, once you're done with your shooting, you have no control. You're just done, as an actor.

My rejection at the Salon brought an end to my hesitation [to settle in Paris] since after this failure I can no longer claim to cope... alas, that fatal rejection has virtually taken the bread out of my mouth.

It's rare in Hollywood to get the chance to work on something that you actually care about. The tragedy of the place is all these talented people trying to get excited about stuff they themselves would only view at gunpoint.

Wagner has some great moments, but a lot of miserable half hours.

So many things have to come together to get a creatively successful and financially successful film. Sometimes you'll have a movie that you're very proud of, and you think it transcended all of your expectations, but it doesn't come out at the right time. I have done movies that have never been released. That can be depressing.

'Catch-22' was a huge failure, and it rubbed off on everybody connected to it. I had a bunch of lean years where I had to do things, a lot of which I wasn't wildly enthusiastic about.

It's quite hard not to cringe at your own music; you're always a bit annoyed at some parts of it.

There are directors who desire to be artistic. It is pathetic to compare the seriousness of their aim with the absurdity of their attainment.