Creative Pain Quotes

Literary dementia seems dated now, but there was a time when a month in the funny farm was as de rigueur for budding writers as an M.F.A. is now. To be sent away was a badge of honor; to undergo electroshock, a glorious martyrdom.

Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?

If you have total freedom to design, you won't get anything interesting. So I give myself restraints in order to kind of push myself through, to create something new. It's the torture that I give myself, the pain and the struggle that I go through.

I don't think that my music without pain is good music - and I wouldn't know, because I haven't made any music without pain.

I don't think successful musicians were really put on this planet in order to have a great time, pat themselves on the back and say, 'Oh, what a clever boy I am!' I think that, like most artists, we were put on the planet to suffer just a little. And we do.

Art is subjective and, as an artiste, if our artistic work is not appreciated by the majority, it hurts.

Songwriting, I have to take myself away from everybody to do. It's an unsightly act.

All the great artists had their dark sides. Look at Amy Winehouse or anyone who has achieved a certain level of success. Even Adele, and the people that you wouldn't put in the same category as a gangster rapper. These women have exposed their vulnerabilities, demons, and things that have hurt them.

Of course, there are those critics - New York critics as a rule - who say, 'Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it's good but then she's a natural writer.' Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

Usually, writing lyrics for me is like bleeding drop by drop from the forehead.

I can always make things longer than I intend for them to be, but cutting things down is just brutal. It's like cutting off your fingers every time you lose a word.

When I wrote "Win," it only took about eight months, but eight months of sheer pain and suffering because every phrase that's in there - and there are about 130 specific linguistic recommendations - I had to test every one to make sure that it worked.

I'm very painful to deal with when I create a shoe.

Pain s the truth of art. Art is not a hobby or a pastime. It is the result of an internal battle royal, one between the quest for safety and the desire to matter.

It's never easy to adapt a book, especially as the author, because it's as if you're chopping off appendages. It really feels painful to decide what has to go.

I never laugh or smile when I am writing. When I come home for lunch after writing all morning, my wife says I look like I just came home from a funeral. This is not bragging. This is an illness.

Write 1000 words a day. That's only about four pages, but force yourself to do it. Put your finger down your throat and throw up. That's what writing's all about.

Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.

... where a man's wound is, that is where his genius will be.

I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.

A song just doesn't come on. I've always had to tease it out, squeeze it out.

Writing a novel is like childbirth: once you realize how awful it really is, you never want to do it again.

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

I have a problem with beginnings... and endings... and middles. But I don't know what else I would do. I find it very, very difficult to write. It takes everything; it's physically and mentally and emotionally exhausting for me. And my neighbours. And my dog.

I've written some great things. That's a gift, but there's consequences. Yeah, you get this great work, but you suffer. You really, really suffer.