Creative Abandonment Quotes

In the eyes of those lovers of perfection, a work is never finished - a word that for them has no sense - but abandoned; and this abandonment, whether to the flames or to the public (and which is the result of weariness or an obligation to deliver) is a kind of an accident to them, like the breaking off of a reflection, which fatigue, irritation, or something similar has made worthless.

I don't paint anymore. I haven't since I abandoned it at 19, in order to begin writing seriously.

Maybe '13 Assassins' is the mortal agony and death rattle of a Japanese film industry that has abandoned its creative talent.

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

I loved to write when I was a child. I wrote, but I always thought it was something that you did as a child, then you put away childish things.

As to the number of novels I've abandoned... I shudder to think. I have thrown away five completed novels, and that's a gruesome enough figure. But not necessarily a waste of effort.

I can't remember who said, 'No film is completed, just abandoned,' but I think most filmmakers will tell you that they could endlessly fiddle with their films for the next couple of decades, you know, changing things, altering things.

No book or poem is ever finished, merely abandoned.

Books and movies are never finished, only surrendered.

The artistic impulse seems not to wish to produce finished work. It certainly deserts us half-way, after the idea is born; and if we go on, it is labor.

I start a lot more songs than I finish, because I realize when I get into them, they're no good. I don't throw them away, I just put them away, store them, get them out of sight.

To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art.

Once I've written something it does tend to run away from me. I don't seem to have any part of it - it's no longer my piece of writing.

An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.

It had helped to keep her sane, that writing. Then, when time had begun again and real people had entered it, she'd abandoned it here. Now it's a whisper from the past. Is that what writing amounts to? The voice your ghost would have, if it had a voice?