I became a painter because I wanted to raise painting to the level of poignancy of music and poetry.
Mark Rothko

I don’t want to be struck by lightning and don’t need certain slants of light in order to write.
Toni Morrison

The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: The bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.
William Blake

The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.
Anais Nin

Artists & Writers

Artists & Writers

Cezanne’s anxiety, that is what interests us.
Picasso

Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure. I always seem to be wrapped in the melodrama of vulgarity.
Willem de Kooning

All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.
Iris Murdoch

Writing is a visual art. You want the reader to see what you’re saying.
Natalie Goldberg

We are surprised and delighted when we come upon a natural style, for instead of an author we find a man.
Blaise Pascal

I don’t know about method. The what is so much more important than the how.
Ezra Pound

I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.
Saul Bellow.