Wise words

Thoughts on Art from creative people born April 11:

from English essayist and poet Christopher Smart (The Student, The Midwife, The Hilliad, A Song to David, Jubilate Agno) (1722-1771):

For I bless God in the libraries of the learned and for all the booksellers in the world.

Awake before the sun is risen, I call for my pen and papers and desk.

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from Polish-born American journalist, humorist, screenwriter, and social scientist Leo Rosten (The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N, The Joys of Yiddish, Captain Newman, M.D., The Power of Positive Nonsense) (1908-1997):

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved.

Words must surely be counted among the most powerful drugs man ever invented.

Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.

Humor is, I think, the subtlest and chanciest of literary forms. It is surely not accidental that there are a thousand novelists, essayists, poets or journalists for each humorist. It is a long, long time between James Thurbers.

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

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from Canadian-born American Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. Poet Laureate, essayist, critic, and translator Mark Strand (Blizzard of One); also known for Sleeping with One Eye Open, The Monument, Hopper (1934-2014):

From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.

Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.

Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.

I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.

I tend to like poems that engage me—that is to say, which do not bore me.

Poetry is, first and last, language—the rest is filler.

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from American screenwriter-director John Milius (Magnum Force, Apocalypse Now, Conan the Barbarian, Red Dawn, Rome) (b. 1944):

I may not be the strongest guy or the most well armed, but you can put me in a room with a pencil and a piece of paper and I can kill anybody.

Writing requires a great deal of skill, just like painting does. People don't want to learn those skills.

Most artists think they're frauds anyway.

Also, they don't understand—writing is language. The use of language. The language to create image, the language to create drama. It requires a skill of learning how to use language.

Films are always pretentious. There's nothing more pretentious than a filmmaker.

I was never conscious of my screenplays having any acts. It's all bullshit.

No, you're either born a writer, a storyteller, or you're not.

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from English journalist, broadcaster, and author Mark Lawson (Front Row, Mark Lawson Talks to…, The Guardian, Bloody Margaret: Three Political Fantasises, The Battle for Room Service, Idlewild) (b. 1962):

Critics are giving marks for originality, acting, photography and scripting, while mass audiences are more drawn to familiarity of genre, stars they would like to have sex with or plots that are more likely to make their dates have sex with them. Reviewers are doing their day's work, cinema-goers are escaping from theirs: this leads to an inevitable difference of response. It is, though, wrong to conclude that reviewers are completely useless. Books, movies and shows may be critic-proof, but the egos and psyches of the people who make them very rarely are.

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from English singer-songwriter Lisa Stansfield (Blue Zone, Affection, "All Around the World," Real Love, So Natural, Lisa Stansfield, Face Up) (b. 1966):

You have to say no to a lot of people and when a lot of people are telling you what you're doing is a bit rubbish you just have to have the courage to say “no it isn't” and believe in it.

I did work incredibly hard but I think there's a certain element of luck.

People say to me about my music “it got me through college, it saved my marriage, it helped me to come out.” It's wonderful to be part of someone's life in a big way.

The power of music is a wonderful thing. It can make us happy, make us cry. It can make us forget and make us remember.

Business people want things to be safe but that's rubbish to me. In music nothing should be safe.