Art Yourself Quotes & Sayings

Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that's what it is. The nature is your nature, and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology are referring to something in you. When your mind is trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.
The inner world is the world of your requirements and your energies and your structure and your possibilities that meets the outer world. And the outer world is the field of your incarnation. That's where you are. You've got to keep both going. As Novalis said, 'The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet. — Joseph Campbell

What I would say is this: writing poems doesn't make you a poet. ... It is only with poetry, for some reason, that everyone wants to believe they can try their hand at it once in a while and be considered, can call themselves a poet. ... . It's a craft. It's an art. It's a skill. It is not therapy, and it is not compensation for terrible things in one's life. It is a thing in itself. You devote yourself to being an instrument of it, or you wander forever in the belief that it is a form of "self-expression." ... And I explained very clearly my opinion of what I think a poet, an artist is. Someone who puts this thing first. — Franz Wright

Reading's not a luxury, art's not a luxury. It's about your soul, and it's about yourself. And if reading is a luxury, being human is a luxury — Jeanette Winterson

I'm adorable, first off. My sense of humor is stellar - obvs."
"Obvs," she echoes dryly.
"I'm extraordinarily skilled in the art of conversation."
She nods. "When it's about yourself, of course."
"Of course." I pretend to think it over some more. "Oh, and I'm a mind reader. No lie. I always know what the other person is thinking."
"Yeah? What am I thinking right now?" Allie challenges.
"That you want me to shut up and fuck you again."
She shakes her head in dismay. "Goddamn it. That's actually what I was thinking."
I smirk at her and tap my forehead. "Told ya. Mind reader. — Elle Kennedy

You want to put out a TV show? If you have the money to do it on your own, by yourself, and you have a TV network, you can do it by yourself. But the nature of the beast is, art needs finance. That's how this industry works. So until the Internet becomes our source of entertainment - and watch it, I believe it will - this is how things go. — Nathan Fillion

Change art to include yourself. — Joseph Kosuth

Now then, you of noble mind, who love this profession, come at once to art and accept these precepts: enthusiasm , reverence, obedience, and perseverance. As soon as you can, place yourself under the guidance of a master, and remain with him as long as possible. — Cennino Cennini

If you're a manager and you're stuck doing the same thing year after year, you're going to get stale and not know how to motivate people. Part of becoming better at what you do requires challenging yourself on a constant basis. — Art Briles

When life sucks, throw yourself into art. — Monica Drake

Fashion is something you attach to yourself, put on, and through that interaction the meaning of it is born. Without the wearing of it, it has no meaning, unlike a piece of art. It is fashion because people want to buy it now, because they want to wear it now, today. Fashion is only the right now. — Rei Kawakubo

Never speak of yourself to others; make them talk about themselves instead; therein lies the whole art of pleasing. Everybody knows it, and everyone forgets it. — Jules De Goncourt

We live today amid ritualized anithumanisms. Among those intelligent enough to feel despair, some seek salvation in the literary artist. Artists love flattery; and the scam doesn't work without mystifying the process.

The weather is unpredictable, but it is not mysterious.

Wall Street is unpredictable, but it is not mysterious.

Writing is unpredictable, (like street and sky, there are too many variables.) Its mystery vanishes, like a shadow, the moment the light aimed at your characters turns back upon yourself. — Doran Larson

In art school we're always taught that art is an end in itself - art for art's sake, expressing yourself, and that that's enough. — Eric Drooker

No matter how much you try and make your surroundings suitable for creativity, if the enviornment inside of you isn't creatively healthy then you won't be able to make the art you want. Being in tune with yourself and your inner truth, being at peace in there, is the best way to nurture your creativity. Then you can even make a bad enviornment a good one. — Gerard Way

You don't always have to say what's on your mind. You can keep it to yourself for the time being. That's called patience. — Art Hochberg

If you see yourself reflected in art, you feel validated. — Erik Parker

As a collector, you will discover that surrounding yourself with art can enrich not only your visual experiences, but instill a sense of vitality to your life and uplift your soul. — Ernest West Basden

As an artist, I think you always have to take care of yourself as a person probably even more than the average person because your body is so important to your art. — Josh Young

In the last analysis, provincialism is your belief in yourself, in your neighborhood, in your reality. It is patriotism without belligerence. Convincing cases have been made to show that all great art is provincial in the sense of reflecting a place, a time, and a Zeitgeist. — Richard M. Weaver

Mastering the art of aloneness doesn't mean living in isolation or never needing the love, support, and involvement of others. It means creating and living a life in which you feel whole and content as an individual on your own; a life in which you can take care of yourself emotionally and financially. — Lauren Mackler

Don't shut yourself up in a band box because you are a woman, but understand what is going on, and educate yourself to take part in the world's work, for it all affects you and yours. — Louisa May Alcott

Music, and art for that matter, to me is not about true meaning to anyone else but yourself. If I told you the meaning of it all from my point of view it would erase the intimacy of art. I feel like art is up for interpretation, so if I told you my meaning, how could you truly relate it to anything that "you" personally are going through?? That is the beauty of art and music in particular — John O'Callaghan

You have to have time to be sorry for yourself to be a good Abstract Expressionist. — Robert Rauschenberg

Art and life really are the same, and both can only be about a spiritual journey, a path towards a re-union with a supreme creator, with god, with the divine; and this is true no matter how unlikely, how strange, how unorthodox, one's particular life path might appear to one's self or others at any given moment. — Genesis P-Orridge

The secret to making yourself stronger is to absorb the strength of the people around you - energy begets energy. — Adachi Zenko

Be kind to others, so that you may learn the secret art of being kind to yourself. — Paramahansa Yogananda

As nice as some of the booths are, it's not the same thing. It's a pity for young artists, because one of the things that a younger artist can look forward to is an emerging dealer who has a space that they can take over and build whatever will suit whatever aesthetic they find themselves in. In an art fair, you turn yourself into an object. — Lawrence Weiner

To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the 'music,' but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow our mind's hearing to your ears' natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning. — Peter Senge

A lot of what making art is, is just being open, and empty. And putting yourself in the right place for things to, literally, come together. — Bill Viola

Half the art of ballooning is to make your crashes so gentle that you can fool yourself into calling them landings. — Richard Branson

Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only; and when inspired, one of them will make dithyrambs, another hymns of praise, another choral strains, another epic or iambic verses- and he who is good at one is not good any other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. — Plato

You are mad to be spending the summer in the country, where the days are too quiet and you have so much time to think. In the city you live on Broadway, where the noise is so thick your scary thoughts can't get a word in edgewise. But here in the county, there is only space. On the stone bridge by the stream. On the mossy rock at the edge of the yard. Behind the abandoned trailer where Art, the old man with the glass eye, used to live. Space, space, space, and you can scare yourself into thinking your thoughts are more like voices. — Lena Dunham

You really need faith in yourself to make art and to stand up for what you believe in. — Elizabeth Peyton

To like something is to insult it. Love it or hate it. Be passionate. As civilisation advances, so does indifference. It is a disease. Immunise yourself with art. And love. — Matt Haig

The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some, it's a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers
of persistence, concentration, and insight
to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems. make art, think deeply. — Susan Cain

If you find yourself pulled beyond all practicality toward doing something
writing poetry, building a business, restoring old cars, planting a secret garden; if at four in the morning the right word comes to you, the perfect flower to plant in that particular spot
you are playing your invisible instrument. — Joan Oliver Goldsmith

If it's a pure expression of yourself no matter what it is or what medium, it's going to shine. It's going to resonate. You could look inside of yourself and you could have a canvas and you could paint a dot in it, but if that is where your creative purpose is taking you then it needs to be that dot. — Rainn Wilson

I think if you are a musician, and artist, you have to have a certain courage. Repeating yourself or photocopying other's art... it's cowardice. If you actually risk your career to do something new, even if it's in a very small way, then it's art. — Thomas Gabriel Fischer

I won't look it in the eye. As soon as I do, I get scared. You gotta walk the plank at some point, but at first you gotta put blinders on or you'll overthink things. I think it's dangerous, by the way, to do a lot of talks about your art, to do so much talking and so little making. You get the wrong idea about yourself. — Laurel Nakadate

Cultivating an intimate relationship with your inner life is the greatest gift you can give yourself and everyone else on the planet. Within you all the power and substance of life resides. In the stillness at the center of your being is the fountain of pure genius, the source of every masterpiece, the answer to every question, the solution to every problem, and the fulfillment of every dream. But you must daily practice the art of making inner contact in order to actualize this truth. — Derek Rydall

And style, by the way, is a very important thing. It is like your signature, your handwriting or it is something that you develop that is your way of presenting yourself and also your way of looking at what art - of how to make art. — Robert Barry

Art is coming face to face with yourself. — Jackson Pollock

A great friendship was like a great work of art, he thought. It took time and attention, and a spark of something that was impossible to describe. It was a happy, lucky accident, finding some kindred part of yourself in a total stranger. pg. 287 — Elise Broach

Quit the bitching on your blog
And stop pretending art is hard.
Just limit yourself to three chords
And do not practice daily.
You'll minimize some stranger's sadness
With a piece of wood and plastic.
Holy fuck it's so fantastic,
Playing ukulele. — Amanda Palmer

The Bible is full of thou-shalt-nots. Thou shalt not kill, that's one. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, that's two. Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother's wife - three and four. Notice how none of them have any loopholes. There are no dependent clauses you can hang your sins on, like: Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother's wife, unless thou art wandering in the blackest hell, lost to yourself and to every memory of light and goodness, and uncovering her nakedness is the only way back to yourself. No, the Bible's absolute when it comes to most things. It's why I don't believe in God.
Sometimes it's necessary to do wrong. Sometimes it's the only way to make things right. Any God who doesn't understand that can go fuck Himself.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain - that's five. — Hillary Jordan

I feel when you walk into somebody's apartment on Fifth Avenue or house in Malibu and you see a Basquiat, a Warhol, a Richard Prince, you say to yourself, '$700,000, $2.2 million, $350,000 ... ' To me that is completely uninteresting. I'd rather go to a house where there's great art and I have no idea who the work is by. — Jean Pigozzi

A spiritual search in art is looking for meaning outside of yourself. — Ross Bleckner

'Untitled' is a time machine that can transport you to 1992, an edgy moment when the art world was crumbling, money was scarce, and artists like Tiravanija were in the nascent stages of combining Happenings, performance art, John Cage, Joseph Beuys, and the do-it-yourself ethos of punk. Meanwhile, a new art world was coming into being. — Jerry Saltz

What Gosta,' he said to himself, 'can you no longer endure? You have been hardened in poverty all of your life; you have heard every tree in the forest, every tuft in the meadows preach to you of sacrifice and patience. You, brought up in a country where the winter is severe, and the summer joy is very short, have you forgotten the art of bearing your trials?
'Oh Gosta, a man must bear all that life gives him with a courageous heart and a smile on his lips, else he is no man. Sorrow as much as you will. If you love your beloved, let your conscience burn and chafe within you, but show yourself a man and a Varmlander. Let your glances beam with joy, and meet your friends with a gay word on your lips! Life and nature are hard. They bring forth courage and joy as a counterweight against their own hardness, or no one could endure them ... — Selma Lagerlof

Meditation is the art of living with yourself. It is nothing else than that, simply that: the art of being joyously alone. A meditator can sit joyously alone for months, for years. He does not hanker for the other, because his own inner ecstasy is so much, is so overpowering, that who bothers about the other? — Rajneesh

Art is a way to express yourself and through that you can escape a bad situation. — Russell Simmons

I was in the emergency room twice with heart palpitations and panic attacks. As one of my actor friends pointed out: your body doesn't know that you're making art. You think about struggle and challenge and you imagine yourself weighing 302 pounds and being restricted and in despair. Your body doesn't know that that's not the case. — Lori Lansens

I thank God that you know the art of tearing yourself apart - I mean the way to humble yourself truly by recognizing and realizing your faults. You are right in believing yourself to be as you describe and to be most unsuitable for any kind of duty; it is on this foundation that Our Lord will base the execution of His plans for you. — Vincent De Paul

There is some other form that you contain within yourself that is not will or purpose and, when applied to art, serves you best. If you systematically apply to the art that you create the aggression of the world that turned you towards art in the first place; if you, in turn, become the aggressor towards your canvas, the thing that you're doing; if you, in turn, work your will upon this thing that you want - you will then cause a dissatisfaction in this life that you create. — Milton Resnick

You can't fool yourself anymore that your art is your art. When you're not getting paid for that song that's being traded back and forth among millions of people on the Internet, you have to think like a businessperson. — Ann Powers

A Gift for You
I send you ...
The gift of a letter from your wise self. This is the part of you that sees you with benevolent, loving eyes. You find this letter in a thick envelope with your name on it, and the word YES written boldly above your name.
My Dear,
I am writing this to remind you of your 'essence beauty.' This is the part of you that has nothing to do with age, occupation, weight, history, or pain. This is the soft, untouched, indelible you. You can love yourself in this moment, no matter what you have, or haven't done or been.
See past any masks, devices, or inventions that obscure your essence.
Remember your true purpose, WHICH is only Love.
If you cannot see or feel love, lie down now and cry; it will cleanse your vision and free your heart.
I love you; I am you. — SARK

Nobody understands the art of living nowadays, ... Catching trains, making appointments, fixing times for everything - all nonsense. Get up with the sun I say, have your meals when you feel like it, and never tie yourself to a time or a date. I could teach people how to live if they would listen to me. — Agatha Christie

The human erotic imagination is a vast wilderness of sexual possibilities. We are each capable of enjoying a pleasurable, satisfying and potentially ecstatic sex life. Yet our culture encourages us to keep the window of possibility very narrow, limiting our erotic expression to a short list of approved activities and energies. To truly experience sexual freedom, you must reclaim your erotic imagination and allow yourself to make your sex life a work of art, your very own creation designed to fulfill your unique needs and desires. — Chris Maxwell Rose

emptying out of my mother's belly
was my first act of disappearance
learning to shrink for a family
who likes their daughters invisible
was the second
the art of being empty
is simple
believe them when they say
you are nothing
repeat it to yourself
like a wish
i am nothing
i am nothing
i am nothing
so often
the only reason you know
you're still alive is from the
heaving of your chest — Rupi Kaur

Understand that the essence of martial arts is not the art itself, but what's hidden deep within yourself. — Gogen Yamaguchi

I look at the human sciences as poetic sciences in which there is no objectivity, and I see film as not being objective, and cinema verite as a cinema of lies that depends on the art of telling yourself lies. If you're a good storyteller then the lie is more true than reality, and if you're a bad one, the truth is worse than a half lie. — Jean Rouch

Poetry is often the art of overhearing yourself say things you didn't know you knew. It is a learned skill to force yourself to articulate your life, your present world or your possibilities for the future. — David Whyte

To be a white kid into hip-hop meant you'd sought it out and you practiced the art. Which meant dedication and diligence, as well as removing yourself at least occasionally from your own comfort zone and circumstances, and from people who looked like you. — Adam Mansbach

The main reason I like UFC is not just the martial arts aspect, but it's about one person against the other person. It's about being able to test yourself with the truth. — Donnie Yen

Unless you are a born connoisseur of art, you will not be able to judge by yourself why certain art is superior to other art. — David Elliott

I think, like any artist, those baby songs are not the best things you've ever written, but they count because they're you're first attempts at creating art and expressing yourself. — Rachel Platten

Crossing out is an art that is, perhaps, even more difficult than writing. It requires the sharpest eye to decide what is superfluous and must be removed. And it requires ruthlessness toward yourself
the greatest ruthlessness and self-sacrifice. You must know how to sacrifice parts in the name of the whole. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

TIMING TOAST
Grook on how to char for yourself
There's an art of knowing when.
Never try to guess.
Toast until it smokes and then
twenty seconds less. — Piet Hein

You know how creative people are, we have to try everything until we find our niche. — E.A. Bucchianeri

Literary fiction and poetry are real marginalized right now. There's a fallacy that some of my friends sometimes fall into, the ol' "The audience is stupid. The audience only wants to go this deep. Poor us, we're marginalized because of TV, the great hypnotic blah, blah." You can sit around and have these pity parties for yourself. Of course this is bullshit. If an art form is marginalized it's because it's not speaking to people. One possible reason is that the people it's speaking to have become too stupid to appreciate it. That seems a little easy to me. — David Foster Wallace

If you chase the art, you really can't fail because you'll always be able to look at yourself in the mirror. And that's not about making angry decisions, either, it's about always doing the right thing for you, your fans and your art. — Gerard Way

Fool! The Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of: what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, 'here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see! — Thomas Carlyle

We teach girls shame. Close your legs; cover yourself. We make them feel as though being born female, they're already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up
and this is the worst thing we do to girls
they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form. — Chimamamda Ngozi Adichie

Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets. — Oscar Wilde

Maybe stalking the woods is as vital to the human condition as playing music or putting words to paper. Maybe hunting has as much of a claim on our civilized selves as anything else. After all, the earliest forms of representational art reflect hunters and prey. While the arts were making us spiritually viable, hunting did the heavy lifting of not only keeping us alive, but inspiring us. To abhor hunting is to hate the place from which you came, which is akin to hating yourself in some distant, abstract way. — Steven Rinella

O brave new world, that hath such people in it
Soon you will be like her, Prospero's daughter,
Finding the door that leads you out of yourself,
Out of the rare, enameled ark of your mind,
Where you live with the gracious and light-footed creatures
That thrive in the glaze of your art and freedom. — Lisel Mueller

One is either an artist or one is not. It is not something one becomes. It is something that one is from birth. We do not study to be artists. We study to become more proficient. To understand more. — Edward Swift

Listen, you're not doing God any favors by praying. You're doing yourself a favor. — Art Hochberg

Love the art, poor as it may be, that you have learned, and be content with it; and pass through the rest of life like one who has entrusted to the gods with his whole soul all that he has, making yourself neither the tyrant nor the slave of any man. — Marcus Aurelius

The most available example of how poetry works for a poet is yourself, and yet you'll probably be the last one to know exactly how you're serving the art and how the art is serving you. — Wendell Berry

All art is exorcism. I paint dreams and visions too; the dreams and visions of my time. Painting is the effort to produce order; order in yourself. There is much chaos in me, much chaos in our time. — Otto Dix

People who are artists, they want their music, their art, their acting craft to get out. And once it's appreciated, that seems to be, unfortunately, enough. But you got to take care of your business, surround yourself with good counsel, and that didn't happen. — Michael Wright

There are no guarantees that if you work hard enough, or are talented enough, that you will be successful, be able to support yourself, or importantly, make a meaningful contribution to others. But in the meantime, if you are an artist, the art just comes - whether you like it or not - because you can't stop it. — Jessica Todd Harper

Art brings a message into a room. It should make us perceive in a new way - either through color, form or narrative content - something we had not perceived before ... and perhaps reveal something to you about yourself. — Gloria Vanderbilt

You can't control what other people think about your art. Think about the part of yourself that you can control, which is your ability to be kind and loving and creative. — Ann Patchett

Part of the art of creating is in discovering your own kind. They are everywhere. But don't look for them in the wrong places
Henry Miller
As you put yourself and your work out there, you will run into your fellow knuckleballers. These are your real peers-the people who share your obsessions, the people who share a similar mission to your own, the people with whom you share a mutual respect. There will only be a handful or so of them, but they're so, so important. Do what you can to nurture your relationships with these people. Show them work before you show anybody else. Keep them as close as you can. — Austin Kleon

Express yourself through your art - whether it's your drawings in a sketchpad, tattoos on your skin, the shade of your lipstick, or the clothes that you wear. — Kat Von D.

Don't give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can't express them. Don't analyze yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak. — Evelyn Waugh

This is wonderful, wonderful! Be the bird. You are the bird. Sacrifice yourself to abandoned family values ... — Laurie Halse Anderson

Hipsters seek refuge in church, Our Lady of Perpetual Subculture. There is some discussion as to whether or not they are still cool but then they are calmed by the obscure location and the arrival of their kind. Keep the address to yourself, let the rabble fund it themselves. Wow, this crappy performance art is really making me feel no so terrible about my various emotional issues. — Colson Whitehead

The experiential test of whether this art is great or good, or minor or abysmal is the effect it has on your own sense of the world and of yourself. Great art changes you. — Wendy Beckett

You will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it ... Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. — C.S. Lewis

Loving music had pushed all of us off the track- away from the normal pursuit of career, mate, and family, on an endless quest for that vibrating high, the plunge beyond time that comes only when you submerge yourself beneath the waterline of amplified sound. We were addicts, in a way, but also adept, enlightened by a noise most people considered no more than a pleasant distraction. What was left for us but to practice our art of listening? — Ann Powers

Just draw 'cause you love it, you know, I think that's why you should be doing it. You should always be doing art for the right reasons, um, and with the best intentions. Anything at all is completely possible and I think that's what I like about drawing. I think it's just really fun. You can do anything you want. And that's part of, like, what's really enjoyable about it ... is kind of losing yourself in it. — Gerard Way

As an artist you have to keep reinventing yourself. — David Hammons

It's a horrible and wonderful battle with yourself, to stay calm, stay in the moment. My coach said, "Stay here, not at the target. Don't be down there." It's why they call it the Zen art. — Geena Davis

I've said for years - ever since I figured out how to write Goblin Hero - that it's important to give yourself permission to write crap. Perfection is the destroyer of art. It's paralyzing. Art, whether it's writing or painting or anything else, requires risk. And risk means you're going to make mistakes. Sometimes you're going to fail. — Jim C. Hines

Every time you work, you have to do it all over again, to rid yourself of this dross. I suppose for a person who is not an artist or not attempting art, it is not dross, because it is the common exchange of everyday life. — Carl Andre

To me, ultimately, martial arts means honestly expressing yourself. — Bruce Lee

All you ought to be worrying about now is order (not about how to impose it on chaos, wish is the opposite of art, but about how to bring it out of chaos, which is art itself). And your worrying about this ought not to be a tortured thing - God knows there's enough torture growing wild in everybody's life so that nobody in his right mind needs to cultivate it - but a serene thing. Don't, in other words, jazz yourself up into a nervous wreck. Be quiet, be as sane as you can, and let the work come out of you. If it's to come, it will; if it's not, no amount of self-induced frenzy is going to hep it along.
One final piece of solemn, teacherly advice, and I do mean this: Try to like yourself a little better. — Blake Bailey