Block Art Quotes & Sayings

Creative power has to filter through our beliefs, attitudes, emotions, and habits. The more negative and constricted our beliefs and patterns are, the more they block the creative energy. Most people hope that by ignoring negativity, it will go away, but the reverse is actually true. Through recognizing, acknowledging, and experiencing it, the blocked energy can be released. You are then free to replace it with positive beliefs and attitudes. — Shakti Gawain

To see the butcher slap the steak before he laid it on the block, and give his knife a sharpening, was to forget breakfast instantly. It was agreeable too - it really was - to see him cut it off so smooth and juicy. There was nothing savage in the act, although the knife was large and keen; it was a piece of art, high art; there was delicacy of touch, clearness of tone, skilful handling of the subject, fine shading. It was the triumph of mind over matter; quite. — Charles Dickens

The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

By and large, the making of serious, thoughtful and occasionally valuable art has become a lonely persuasion, while the marketing of art has become a boutique operation, manipulated by fashion, self-serving art scholars and the vagaries of the auction block. — Abe Ajay

The outside world can only trigger or block your experience of your true nature. Each time something beautiful takes your breath away, that's you experiencing yourself. Each time you fall in love with someone, that's you experiencing yourself. Each time a child's smile gives you unspeakable joy, that's you experiencing yourself. Your true nature is beautiful. Life is the art of rediscovering yourself, again and again, in different forms, celebrating, rejoicing, welcoming. You are beautiful. You are life itself. — Vironika Tugaleva

San Francisco itself is art, above all literary art. Every block is a short story, every hill a novel. Every home a poem, every dweller within immortal. That is the whole truth. — William, Saroyan

The work of art is already within the block of marble. I just chop off whatever isn't needed. — Auguste Rodin

From the moon, the Earth is so small and so fragile, and such a precious little spot in that Universe, that you can block it out with your thumb. Then you realize that on that spot, that little blue and white thing, is everything that means anything to you - all of history and music and poetry and art and death and birth and love, tears, joy, games, all of it right there on that little spot that you can cover with your thumb. And you realize from that perspective that you've changed forever, that there is something new there, that the relationship is no longer what it was. — Rusty Schweickart

It's useful to know how much society's holding you back. My mother would talk about how she was told by the head of her art school that she was the best painter, but that she wouldn't get the biggest prize because she would waste her talent by having children. I think we have to get honest with girls about how they can expect the world to block them, and we have to prepare girls, and ourselves, to break through those blocks. — Erica Jong

A major triumph of mathematical imagination: the use of visual imagery to condense a large quantity of information into a single comprehensible picture ... Mathematicians are just beginning to understand these basic building blocks of change and to analyze how they combine. The methodology involved has a very different spirit from traditional modeling with differential equations: it is more like chemistry than calculus, requiring careful counterpoint between analysis and synthesis. — Ian Stewart

Anyone who relishes art should love the extraordinary diversity and psychic magic of our art galleries. There's likely more combined square footage for the showing of art on one New York block - West 24th Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues - than in all of Amsterdam's or Hamburg's galleries. — Jerry Saltz

Dinna worrit yourself, man," said Jamie's voice. "You'll learn. It's a bit difficult, isn't it, when your cock doesna stick out any further than your belly button?" I stuck my head around the corner, to find him seated on a chopping block, engaged in converse with his namesake, who was struggling manfully with the folds of his smock. "What are you doing with the child?" I inquired cautiously. "I'm teachin' young James here the fine art of not pissing on his feet," he explained. "Seems the least his uncle could do for him." I — Diana Gabaldon

To get over artist's block, make shitty art. — Dave Horowitz

I gradually realized that I was seeing another example of creative ebb, another step by another art on the road that may indeed end in extinction. — Stephen King

It was like penetrating deep into white marble with the pounding live thrust of
his chisel beating upward through the warm living marble with one "Go!", his whole body behind the heavy hammer, penetrating through ever deeper and deeper furrows of soft yielding living substance until he had reached the explosive climax, and all of his
fluid strength, love, passion, desire had been poured into the nascent form, and the marble block, made to love the and of the true sculptor, and responded, giving of its inner heat
and substance and fluid form, until at last the sculptor and the marble had totally coalesced, so deeply penetrating and infusing each other that they had become one, marble and man and organic unity, each fulfilling the other in the greatest act of art and love known to the human species. — Irving Stone

That experience of touching down in a totally foreign place is like having a blank canvas: You begin with nothing, but stroke by stroke you build a life. This process requires everything great art requires-risk-tasking, hope, a great deal of imagination, all the qualities that are the building blocks of art. You must be able to dream something nearly impossible and toil to bring it into existence. — Edwidge Danticat

My reading and studying and retellings of old stories didn't do anything except help me think better. I was at least thoughtful. Too thoughtful, my friends said. And all I thought about was myths and old paintings that made me feel drunk on wine or struck my lightning but didn't matter to most people. — Francesca Lia Block

Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today ... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking. — John Dos Passos

The statue lies hid in a block of marble; and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter, and removes the rubbish. — Joseph Addison

Sometimes you fall, spinning through space, grasping for the things that keep you on this earth. Sometimes you catch them. They can be the hands of the people you love. They can be your pets- pups with funny names, cats with ferocious old souls. The thing that keeps you here can be your art. It can be things you have collected and invested with a certain sense of meaning. A flowered, buckled treasure chest of secrets. Shoes that make you taller and, therefore, closer to the heavens. A suit that belonged to your fairy godmother. A dress that makes you feel a little like the Goddess herself.
Sometimes you keep falling; you don't catch anything.
Sometimes you fall, spinning through space, grasping for the things that keep you here. Sometimes you catch them. Sometimes you don't.
Sometimes they catch you. — Francesca Lia Block

If we believe something does not exist unless we measure it, then we put aside: love, feeling, intuition, art and philosophy. — Peter Block

The Metropolitan Museum of Art claims to be the largest in the western hemisphere. It's right, but I'm not too sure about the arts bit. Don't misunderstand me. It's got tons of genuine art. It's also got tons of stuff that is hard to classify. I can't come to grips with a massive cube with a grandiose title. I allow that it's art, but not my sort. I need the big stone block to tell me something about the bloke whose name's on the caption, and it doesn't. That off my chest, I admit that any place with 3.3 million works of art truly is a wonder. — Jonathan Gash

Writer's block is a natural affliction. Writers who have never experienced it have something wrong with them. It means there isn't enough friction-that they aren't making enough of an effort to reconcile the contradictions of life. All you get is sweet monotonous flow. Writer's block is nothing to commit suicide over. It simply indicates some imbalance between your experience and your art, and I think that's constructive. — Stanley Kunitz

The story is told of Michelangelo being asked about his methods for sculpting.
He replied simply that he worked on a block of marble, removing all that was not
part of the sculpture until only the sculpture remained. I suspect this oversimplifies
the art of sculpture, but it's an excellent analogy for photography, which is
essentially an art of exclusion. — David DuChemin

I don't get writers block. I get writer has too many ideas and doesn't know which one to start next, block. — Tyler Hojberg

On dispersive ground, therefore, fight not. On facile ground, halt not. On contentious ground, attack not. On open ground, do not try to block the enemy's way. On the ground of intersecting highways, join hands with your allies. On serious ground, gather in plunder. In difficult ground, keep steadily on the march. On hemmed-in ground, resort to stratagem. On desperate ground, fight. — Sun Tzu

I don't worry anymore about writing. There are times that I go through dry periods. I never go through a block. I'm always writing, but there are times where I'm just not on my game, and I'll use that time to read some new poets, go see some art, walk down to the river and just stare at it, or have a conversation with my sister, or whatever - do whatever it is that I do in my life, hoping that I'll get filled up enough. And something will happen, some juggling will happen and boom. — Dorianne Laux

All the traditional models for doing things are collapsing; from music to publishing to film, and it's a wide open door for people who are creative to do what they need to do without having institutions block their art. — Ava DuVernay

The last thing we discover in composing a work is what to put down first. — Blaise Pascal

The art of the great historic civilizations never impress us as much as an Eskimo harpoon or a mask from the South Pacific. The contact is physical, and the feeling we experience is very much like acute anxiety. Inner or outer space, the world below or beyond, becomes a great weight pressing down upon us. Each work is a solid block of time, time standing still, time more massive than a mountain, despite the fact that it is as intangible as air or thought. The handiwork of primitive peoples reveals the time before time. — Octavio Paz

Just like any woman, ... we weave our stories out of our bodies. Some of us through our children, or our art; some do it just by living. It's all the same. — Francesca Lia Block

Through the window I looked across the oil-black Tigris at the Green Zone, lit up like Disneyland in Dystopia. I thought about J.G. Ballard's novel High Rise, where a state-of-the-art London tower block is the vertical stage for civilization to unpeel itself until nothing but primal violence remains. — David Mitchell

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need. — Auguste Rodin

A statue lies hid in a block of marble, and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter and removes the rubbish. The figure is in the stone; the sculptor only finds it. What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint, or the hero,
the wise, the good, or the great man,
very often lies hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred, and have brought to light. — Joseph Addison

Baby, I love you. Pen ... More then I love the color black. More than I love cigarettes, more than I love books. Even music."
"More than food. More than art or stories. More than words ... — Francesca Lia Block

Valentine
my friends stitched it up with golden thread
like a red
satin pillow they gave me other whole ones too
roses and charms and red candles
milagros to repair the real one
they told me i was no longer allowed to give it away
a pretty pin cushion
a piece of mexican folk art
a hundred beating poems left unanswered
like a thing to wear around the neck
they said you must heal we will protect you
but i sat weeping at the computer forging ahead anyway
with the small stitched thing struggling in my chest
it knew that it had needed to be torn
so that it could recognize and receive the hundred kindnesses
traveling across three thousand miles at the speed of light
a storm of petals and beautiful words and tiny hearts to keep it
company — Francesca Lia Block

For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed - it is a process of elimination. — Elbert Hubbard

What are you going to do if you find art, Pen? You going to steal some and put it in the van?"
"I'm going to remember. When there was art. — Francesca Lia Block

When I have a creative block, I take walks. I like to see what shapes stick out - so many legs rushing by at once, it can seem abstract. I don't need to see great art to get stirred up. Music does that for me more easily. — Caio Fonseca

The art of growing old is the art of being regarded by the oncoming generations as a support and not as a stumbling-block. — Andre Maurois

Art in order to move you has to be political or sexual - whether it is on canvas, in the drum of the cello, in the words of the poet. If it doesn't move you, what is the point? And if it does move you, what is the point? The point is to touch your senses, your soul. To carve, as a knife in the right hands, carves beauty from a block of wood. — Chloe Thurlow

In truth, the best long-term explanations about our ancient counterparts can be found in the paintings, sculpture, crafts, tools of utility, language and architecture left behind. These are the building blocks of civilization we call culture. These are what we call 'the arts. — Edward J. Fraughton

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. — Martha Graham

Art is not in some far-off place. — Lydia Davis

The best way to become more creative is to create nothing. By this, I mean that you should return to zero point. Rid yourself of all the mental and emotional blocks that keep you from manifesting your full creative potential. — Ilchi Lee

Writer's block comes from the feeling that one is doing the
wrong thing or doing the right thing badly. Fiction written for
the wrong reason may fail to satisfy the motive behind it and
thus may block the writer, as I've said; but there is no wrong
motive for writing fiction. At least in some instances, good
fiction has come from the writer's wish to be loved, his wish
to take revenge, his wish to work out his psychological woes,
his wish for money, and so on. No motive is too low for art;
finally it's the art, not the motive, that we judge. — John Gardner

Set in the remote and harsh high desert landscape of Idaho, Outpost is an artist live/work studio and sculpture garden for making and displaying art. An important aspect of the complex is the protected paradise garden, which is separated from the wild landscape by thick masonry walls. The materials used in the structure, including concrete block, car-decking, and plywood, require little to no maintenance, and are capable of withstanding the extreme weather that characterize the desert's four seasons. — Tom Kundig

It is always necessary to acknowledge creative injuries and grieve them. Otherwise, they become creative scar tissue and block your growth. — Julia Cameron

The myth stems from the belief that writing is some mystical process. That it's magical. That it abides by its own set of rules different from all other forms of work, art, or play.But that's bullshit. Plumbers don't get plumber's block. Teachers don't get teacher's block. Soccer players don't get soccer block. What makes writing different? Nothing. The only difference is that writers feel they have a free pass to give up when writing is hard. — Patrick Rothfuss

She went out in the city with its lights like a radioactive phosphorescence, wandered through galleries where the high-priced art on the walls was the same as the graffiti scrawled outside by taggers who were arrested or killed for it, went to parties in hotel rooms where white-skinned, lingerie-clad rock stars had been staying the night their husbands shot themselves in the head, listened to music in nightclubs where stunning boyish actors had OD'd on the pavement. — Francesca Lia Block