Artistic Necessity Quotes

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.

When I don't write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.

Art is a mind-game that we do to make our lives easier. If it isn't for that, it becomes superfluous.

I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live.

A king or a prince becomes by accident a part of history. A poet or an artist becomes by nature and necessity a part of universal humanity.

I think I'm needed - as an artist, as an individual, as an entity, an enigma, an exhibitionist, an entertainer - as an alternative.

There is no Sixth Commandment in art. The poet is entitled to lay his hands on whatever material he finds necessary for his work.

People think I like to expose my body. But I don't. It's just because the dance moves require it.

I feel like with acting it's not like you make a choice - it's kind of in you and you have to do it or you wouldn't be able to survive.

If there is no music, I will perish. While I have not learnt music, I can play the tune that comes into my head on the keyboard.

I doubt that art needed Ruskin any more than a moving train needs one of its passengers to shove it.

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

The latest fashion… is absolutely necessary for a painting. It’s what matters most.

Although most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors -- somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating -- none of us can name two French generals or department store owners of that period. I take enormous pride in considering myself an artist, one of the necessaries.

I don't know how to function without music. When I'm not making it, I'm listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.

Writers talk about the agony of writing; I talk about the agony of not writing.

People won't stop painting, just as they won't stop making music or dancing. This is a facility we have. Children don't stop doing it or having it. On the other hand, it seems we don't need painting anymore. Culture is more interested in entertaining people.

The point of art is that it always has the necessity to expand because people are inherently expanding.

History has proven that it's impossible to crush the artist. There's always gonna be a need for somebody to write a poem or sing a song about something, about life - that makes it real. There's the word that goes beyond the word.

You have to be compelled to write. If you’re not, nothing else that you do matters.

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.

The process of creation becomes necessary to the painter perhaps more than is the picture. The process in fact is habit-forming

I could never even entertain the notion that it's an option, to not be an artist.

The Arts are man's most useless ... and essential ... activity.