Artistic Passion Quotes

“The soul of an artist cannot be muted indefinitely. It must either be expressed or it will consume the host.”
― Gerard de Marigny, Rise to the Call

“What a face this girl possessed!—Could I neither die then nor gaze at her face every day, I would need to recreate it through painting or sculpture, or through fatherhood, until a second such face could be born.”
― Roman Payne, The Wanderess

“About writing:The trick is to make sure you love what you've produced--to Believe..in order to convince.”
― Christina Westover

“Life is the ultimate artistic masterpiece, and it's up to you, the creator, to make it as wildly dazzling as possible.”
― Laura Resau, The Indigo Notebook

“I was surfing the Internet for a different sort of education. I surfed for photos of circus freaks and synonyms for the word intercourse and for answers to why staring at the stars in the evening tore my heart with longing.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver

“Not every artistic person should have to be a photographer, but every photographer should be artistic.”
― Pradeepa Pandiyan

“There are two kinds of artists in this world; those that work because the spirit is in them, and they cannot be silent if they would, and those that speak from a conscientious desire to make apparent to others the beauty that has awakened their own admiration.”
― Anna Katharine Green

“Pain is a crucial part of our reality; it awakens a person from a mental stupor. A person must never be afraid to discover where their pain originates, follow pain to where it emanates from, learn from its messages, and reject the mindless business and busyness of contemporary culture in order to fuel an artistic vision of the self.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“All writers are demonic dreamers. Writing is an act of sharing experiences and offering of an individualistic perspective of our private attitudes pertaining to whatever topics of thought intrigues the author. Writing is a twitchy art, which attempts to employ linguist building blocks handed-down from past generations. Writers’ word choices form a structure of conjoined sentences when overlaid with the lingua of modern culture. Writers attempt to emulate in concrete form the synesthesia of our personal pottage steeped in our most vivid feelings. Writing a personal essay calls for us to sort out a jungle of lucid observations and express in a tangible technique our unique interpretation of coherent observations interlaced with that effusive cascade of yearning, the universal spice of unfilled desire, which turmoil of existential angst swamps us.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Some people can see art in everything.”
― Efrat Cybulkiewicz

“I knew I could not sketch a woman, in all her natural inner beauty. I may have the perfect skill, but putting something in pen and paper, is interesting, unique, nothing less than a challenge.”
― Deepak Ranjan, Nights of the Velvet: A Conditional Dream

“Witnessing the panoply of beauty in all of nature takes us out of our shell of self-absorption and makes us realize that we are merely bit players in the game of life. Witnessing the majesty of beauty confirms that the real show lies outside us to observe and appreciate and not inside us to transfix us. True beauty charms us into seeing the grandeur of goodness that surrounds us and by doing so, the pristine splendor of nature releases us from wallowing in the poverty of our self-idealization. The bewitching spell cast by the exquisiteness of nature levitates our souls and transforms our psyche. When we see, hear, taste, smell, or touch what is beautiful, we cannot suppress the urge to replicate its baffling texture by singing, dancing, painting, or writing. Opening our eye to the loveliness of a single flower is how we stay in touch with the glorious pageantry of living.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“An author’s operating charter is to unearth embedded symbols that reflect complementary and inconsistent relationships of our collective assemblage, combine harmonizing and contradictory conceptions that motivate us, and delve larger truths out of variable and erratic elements of human nature.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“The human brain acts as a mere transducer of electrical energy. Our senses are on full alert when we are in danger. In contrast, when we are relatively safe and secure, our senses tend to slumber, making the world pass by analogous to a fuzzy dream composed of meaningless impressions. Inner turmoil causes energy surges in the brain. A spontaneously convulsing brain is an artistic brain. It is useful to write whenever one is in pain or feeling particularly introspective. Trauma awakens us from a sedated life. A clicked on brain displays greater sensitivity to the synesthetic perceptions that fill life with a diversity of sounds, colors, tastes, tactile feelings, and odors.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“A true artist is never satisfied with settling, so you will never see them stay the same for very long. They are like chameleons... ever-changing, ever-scheming, ever-chasing that glimpse of divine inspiration that creates them anew.”
― Sarah Loven, Les Belles Lettres

“What I’m after, above all, is a sense of divine inspiration
that touches the very core of my being.

That lives throughout every aspect of my existence,

so all I do and all I see is beauty in the simplicity,
and mystery in the unknown.

To let nothing drag me into the monotony of living,

but to always move to the unique rhythm of each passing day.
To give nothing but all of me- my soul, my heart, my fire.”
― Sarah Loven, Les Belles Lettres

“That’s what our life is like: little bits and broken pieces…Picture your life as a mixed media collage. Whatever you add to the collage from this point forward is up to you. You can keep moving those broken parts around. You can add similar pieces…But God might have something more for you. God’s plans for you are so much bigger than what you can ever imagine for yourself. He can use you in so many ways if you let him. You can grow in him and share in the masterpiece he wants to make of your life’s collage.”
― Mary Potter Kenyon, Called to Be Creative: A Guide to Reigniting Your Creativity

“If simplicity is beautiful then something of utmost simplicity is of utmost beauty.”
― Robin Blair-Crawford

“A dreamer rises above their inherent fearfulness that they will always produce inferior work and grants oneself a license to put forth their best effort.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Advancing towards a person’s dreams with confidence enables a person to move beyond restrictive boundaries and meet with uncommon success. Liberated from personal insecurities and eliminating useless second guessing enables a person to live an imagined life.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Dane and Marco and the boys all fled the stage but I was still playing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’. I tried different interesting arrangments. Mozart’s twelve variations and Elton John style. Even Billy Joel/‘Piano Man’-ish. Then I had a brainstorm and thumped it out like Jerry Lee Lewis, with my feet on the keys and everything, and that seemed to confuse the guy waving the gun. Anyway he didn’t shot me.
By now I was really getting into ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’, actually getting the old flash while I played it over and over, I don’t know how many times, and I sort of hypnotised myself. I was in a trance.
People had thrown every available bottle and can and busted seat at me. Now they started on the fire extinguishers, and they were frothing and spurting and rolling around on the stage. Even the over-roided security joined in, and the bouncers were throwing stuff at me, too. I didn’t care. I was in a daze. I felt bulletproof and above it all, and when I eventually finished I stood in front of the redwood crucifix with my arms out, covered in fire-extinguisher foam like a snowman, and bowed to the audience.
And then for some insane reason I pushed over the crucifix, which was difficult because it was heavy and splintery, and it cut my hands so I was bleeding everywhere, and I deliberately rubbed the blood all over my face. Then I put my foot on the crucifix, like a big-game hunter with his kill, like Ernest Hemingway with a dead lion, and raised my bloody fist in victory.
And there was a sort of roar then, a deep roar lie a squadron of B-47s. And I passed out on the stage.
I came to with someone furiously screaming. An amazing octave range, about five – from an F1 to B flat 6. It was your mother standing over me like a tigress, waving a broken seat, and preventing the Texans from rushing the stage and stomping me to death, they were wary of this wild, high-pitched little chick and backed off.
As I stumbled back to the dressing-room, Tania was yelling that she wished the oil-rig guy had shot me, and this was the end, she’d really had it. And the record-company people were just staring at me open-mouthed like I was a lunatic. And outside, our tour bus had been set on fire, and there were no extinguishers left, and the police and fire brigade got involved, on the side of the Texans, and there was suddenly a visa problem.
So that was it for Spider Flower in America. And for your mother and me, as it turned out.”
― Robert Drewe, Whipbird

“More writers fail from lack of character than from lack of intelligence. Technical solidity is not attained without at least some persistence. The chief cause of false writing is economic. Many writers need or want money. These writers could be cured by an application of banknotes. The next cause is the desire men have to tell what they don't know, or to pass off an emptiness for a fullness. They are discontented with what they have to say and want to make a pint of comprehension fill up a gallon of verbiage. An author having a very small amount of true contents can make it the basis of formal and durable mastery, provided he neither inflates nor falsifies [...] The plenum of letters is not bounded by primaeval exclusivity functioning against any kind of human being or talent, but only against false coiners, men who will not dip their metal in the acid of known or accessible fact.”
― Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading