Best Art Inspiration Quotes & Sayings

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case. — Chuck Close

The Nobel Prize is the best thing that can happen to a writer in terms of how it affects your contracts, the publishers, and the seriousness with which your work is taken. On the other hand, it does interfere with your private life, or it can if you let it, and it has zero effect on the writing.It doesn't help you write better and if you let it, it will intimidate you about future projects. — Toni Morrison

Photography is a Passion Not a Hobby! — Ilyass Azaryouh

Creativity in any form stimulates creativity in every form, music, arts, literature ... I find inspiration in anything. It's all the same. — Marc Jacobs

Creation is not a moment of inspiration but a lifetime of endurance. The drawers of the world are full of things begun. Unfinished sketches, pieces of invention, incomplete product ideas, notebooks with half-formulated hypotheses, abandoned patents, partial manuscripts. Creating is more monotony than adventure. It is early mornings and late nights: long hours doing work that will likely fail or be deleted or erased - a process without progress that must be repeated daily for years. Beginning is hard, but continuing is harder. Those who seek a glamorous life should not pursue art, science, innovation, invention, or anything else that needs new. Creation is a long journey where most turns are wrong and most ends are dead. The most important thing creators do is work. The most important thing they don't do is quit. The — Kevin Ashton

It has been my personal experience that as I allow the painting to speak I become lost, it is delicious and at the same time frightening. The best ones, to me, have a life of their own. — Luther E. Vann

CALIGULA: I'm the only true artist Rome has known - the only one, believe me - to match his inspiration with his deeds.
CHEREA: That's only a matter of having the power.
CALIGULA: Quite true. Other artists create to compensate for their lack of power. I don't need to make a work of art; I live it. — Albert Camus

I sense a Threshold: Light to Silence, Silence to Light - an ambiance of inspiration, in which the desire to be, to express, crosses with the possible Light to Silence, Silence to Light crosses in the sanctuary of art. — Louis Kahn

In the rare moments I permitted any stillness, I noted a small fluttering at the pit of my belly, a barely perceptible disturbance. The faint whisper of a word would sound in my head: writing. At first I could not say whether it was heartburn or inspiration. The more I listened, the louder the message became: I needed to write, to express myself through written language not only so that others might hear me but so that I could hear myself. The gods, we are taught, created humankind in their own image. Everyone has an urge to create. Its expression may flow through many channels: through writing, art, or music or through the inventiveness of work or in any number of ways unique to all of us, whether it be cooking, gardening, or the art of social discourse. The point is to honor the urge. To do so is healing for ourselves and for others; not to do so deadens our bodies and our spirits. When I did not write, I suffocated in silence. — Gabor Mate

The first problem of any kind of even limited success is the unshakable conviction that you are getting away with something, and that at any moment now they will discover you. It's Imposter Syndrome, something my wife Amanda christened The Fraud Police.

In my case, I was convinced that there would be a knock on the door, and a man with a clipboard (I don't know why he carried a clipboard, in my head, but he did) would be there, to tell me it was all over, and they had caught up with me, and now I would have to go and get a real job, one that didn't consist of making things up and writing them down, and reading books I wanted to read. — Neil Gaiman

Ultimately, musicians of the world must come realise the potential of their calling.
Like the shamans, we may serve as healers, metaphysicians, inciters, exciters,
spiritual guides and sources of inspiration.
If the musician is illuminated from within,
he becomes a lamp that lights other lamps.
Then he is serving planet and its people,
healing what ails us. Such music is truly important.
It is said that "only one who obeys can truly command."
When the artist is immersed in a services,
giving himself up over and over again, another paradox occurs:
He is being seen by all others as a master. — Kenny Werner

There isn't much art to writing, you just feel; feel everything deeply and somehow transform your lessons into a magical piece of work that will help someone else's heartache. — Nikki Rowe

Plato said: 'He who approaches the temple of the Muses without inspiration in the belief that craftmanship alone suffices, will remain a bungler and his presumptuous poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs.' — Chuck Palahniuk

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

Don't try to follow trends. Create them. — Simon Zingerman

How do you even know I'm someone you'll want to remember? We've only seen each other once before.'
(Amber)
'Have you ever looked at a painting and known you had something in common with it? Have you ever seen something so beautiful you feel like crying? When I see you, I feel that way. I feel like the deepest part of me understands something vital about you.'
(Virgil Daly) — Christina Westover

Teaching mathematics, like teaching any art, requires the ability to inspire the student. Inspiration requires marketing, and marketing requires stirring communication. — Hartosh Singh Bal

Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new film, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. — Jim Jarmusch

God is not interested in your art but, your heart. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

Baseball was an art, but to excel at it you had to become a machine. It didn't matter how beautifully you performed _sometimes_, what you did on your best day, how many spectacular plays you made. You weren't a painter or a writer
you didn't work in private and discard your mistakes, and it wasn't just your masterpieces that counted. What mattered, as for any machine, was repeatability. Moments of inspiration were nothing compared to elimination of error. The scouts cared little for Henry's superhuman grace; insofar as they cared they were suckered-in aesthetes and shitty scouts. Can you perform on demand, like a car, a furnace, a gun? Can you make that throw one hundred times out of a hundred? If it can't be a hundred, it had better be ninety-nine. — Chad Harbach

Wilderness, to me, is a spiritual necessity. The mysterious spiritual experience of being close to natural restored my soul [after the death of his son]. My experience reinforced by dedication to use the art of photography as an inspiration for others to work together to save nature's places of spiritual sanctuary for future generations. — Clyde Butcher

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul. — W. Somerset Maugham

Imitation is not inspiration, and inspiration only can give birth to a work of art. The least of man's original emanation is better than the best of borrowed thought. — Albert Pinkham Ryder

The basket would never make her famous or end up in a museum. The best part of it was the making of it, sitting at the table weaving while outside the lake crashed into shore and the seagulls roosted somewhere for the night and two women stopped for a moment to watch. — Ellen Airgood

Fifth letter : To lead your best life, do your best work

There is no insignificant work in the world. All labor is a chance to express personal talents, to create our art and to realize the genius we are built to be. We must work like picasso painted : with devotion, passion, energy and excellence. In this way, our productivity will not only become a source of inspiration to others, but it will have an impact - making a difference in the lives around us. One of the greatest secrets to a life beautifully lived is to do work that matters. And to ascend to such a state of mastery in it that people can't take ther eyes off you. — Robin S. Sharma

When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best
that is inspiration. — Robert Bresson

Beautiful buildings are more than scientific. They are true organisms, spiritually conceived; works of art, using the best technology by inspiration rather than the idiosyncrasies of mere taste or any averaging by the committee mind. — Frank Lloyd Wright

If ever in pain, I think the best thing we can do is to create something. — Kamal Ravikant

The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration. — Steven Pressfield

To improve our schools, we have to humanize them and make education personal to every student and teacher in the system. Education is always about relationships. Great teachers are not just instructors and test administrators. They are mentors, coaches, motivators, and lifelong sources of inspiration to their students. Teaching is an art form. Great teachers know they have to cultivate curiosity, passion and creativity in their students. — Ken Robinson

Collect books, even if you don't plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library. — John Waters

The 'Muse' is not an artistic mystery, but a mathematical equation. The gift are those ideas you think of as you drift to sleep. The giver is that one you think of when you first awake. — Roman Payne

For the novelist or poet, for the scientist or artist, the question is not where do ideas come from, the question is how they come. The how is the mystery. The how is fragile. — E.L. Konigsburg

Do you know what it takes to do [a global art project]? People, energy, glue. — JR

Doing it all the time, whether or not we are in the mood, gives us ownership of our writing ability. It takes it out of the realm of conjuring where we stand on the rock of isolation, begging the winds for inspiration, and it makes it something as do-able as picking up a hammer and pounding a nail. Writing may be an art, but it is certainly a craft. It is a simple and workable thing that can be as steady and reliable as a chore - does that ruin the romance? — Julia Cameron

Works of Art are meant to connect the human heart to inspiration, for cosmic consciousness to grow in the Supreme Reality rooted in Life and Being. — Nelly Mazloum

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies. — William Faulkner

Beauty isn't what you see on TV or in magazine ads or even necessarily in art galleries. It's a lot deeper and a lot simpler than that. It's realizing the goodness of things, it's leaving the world a little better than it was before you got here. It's appreciating the inspiration of the world around you and trying to inspire others. — Charles De Lint

The biggest and first obstacle any artist faces is not believing they can do something. You have the talent. Just believe you are capable of doing it, because you are. Writing anything, for anyone, regardless of expertise, is like crossing the Atlantic in a canoe. What you are doing is saying "I don't know how to row". Start rowing, you will get there. Just know it will take time and perseverance, but you will get there! — Aaron Denius Garcia

Art, science, love, inspiration, ideals - choose out all the words with which humanity is wont, or has been in the past, to be consoled or to be amused - Chekhov has only to touch them and they instantly wither and die. And Chekhov himself faded, withered and died before our eyes. Only his wonderful art did not die - his art to kill by a mere touch, a breath, a glance, everything whereby men live and wherein they take their pride. And in this art he was constantly perfecting himself, and he attained to a virtuosity beyond the reach of any of his rivals in European literature. — Lev Shestov

A painting which does not take its inspiration from the heart is nothing more than futile juggling. — Caspar David Friedrich

What in hell are you really made of, Howard? After all, it's only a building. It's not the combination of holy sacrament, Indian torture, and sexual ecstasy that you seem to make of it."
"Isn't it? — Ayn Rand

As for work, without it, without painstaking work, any writer or artist definitely remains a dilettante; there's no point in waiting for so-called blissful moments, for inspiration; if it comes, so much the better
but you keep working anyway. — Ivan Turgenev

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

Art serves a purpose. It expands our horizons, frees our minds, and opens us up to new experiences. It opens the imagination. All these great discoveries of our time - without the desire to reach beyond our boundaries, we would be forever stagnant. The folly is in closing one's eyes and not recognizing it. — Carol Oates

The craft of writing is all the stuff that you can learn through school; go to workshops and read books. Learn characterization, plot and dialogue and pacing and word choice and point of view. Then there's also the art of it which is sort of the unknown, the inspiration, the stuff that is noncerebral. — Garth Stein

I have occupied this idle, empty winter with writing a story. It has been written to please myself, without thought of my own vanity or modesty, without regard for other people's feelings, without considering whether I shock or hurt the living, without scrupling to speak of the dead.

The world, I know, is changing. I am not indifferent to the revolution that has caught us in its mighty skirts, to the enormity of the flood that is threatening to submerge us. But what could I do? In the welter of the surrounding storm, I have taken refuge for a moment on this little raft, constructed with the salvage of my memory. I have tried to steer it into that calm haven of art in which I still believe. I have tried to avoid some of the rocks and sandbanks that guard its entrance.

[from the introduction] — Dorothy Bussy

The way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas. — Linus Pauling

Only by pairing knowledge with inspiration will art evolve. Without these conditions any musician will remain a flawed artist, if one may speak of an artist at all. — Hector Berlioz

The stallion and his mare,
unbridled, with arrow-pattern,
are worked on.
the blue cloth
before the door
of religion and inspiration ... — Hilda Doolittle

Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Bruce Lee are my masters; they're the inspiration for my work. Bruce Lee was a heavy fighter who threw hard punches. Jackie moves very fast and uses a lot of comedy, and Jet Li is very fluid. I've tried to combine all of their styles and added some things of my own — Tatchakorn Yeerum

What sets 'Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children' apart is Riggs's use of 'found' photographs as a spark of inspiration for the narrative. 'Found' describes art created from common objects that are not normally considered art. — Claire Cameron