Wise Words

 

Thoughts on Art from creative people born February 28:

from English satirical artist and illustrator and Sir John Tenniel (Punch, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass) (1820-1914):

Well, I get my subject on Wednesday night; I think it out carefully on Thursday, and make my rough sketch; on Friday morning I begin, and stick to it all day, with my nose well down on the block.

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from Welsh poet, editor, and critic Arthur William Symons (Days and Nights, London Nights, Amoris Victima, Images of Good and Evil, The Savoy, The Symbolist Movement in Literature) (1865-1945):

All art is a form of artifice. For in art there can be no prejudices.

Art begins when a man wishes to immortalize the most vivid moment he has ever lived.

The making of one's life into art is, after all, the first duty and privilege of every man.

Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move.

Vaguely conscious of that great suspense in which we live, we find our escape from its sterile, annihilating reality in many dreams, in religion, passion, art.

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from American newspaperman and playwright Ben Hecht (Chicago Daily News, Twentieth Century, The Front Page) (1894-1964):

The rule in the art world is: you cater to the masses or you kowtow to the elite; you can't have both.

Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer's habit to remember nothing good of himself. I have usually forgotten those who have admired my work, and seldom anyone who disliked it. Obviously, this is because praise is never enough and censure always too much.

I have written a raucous valentine to a poet's dream and agony.

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from American Oscar-winning director Vincente Minnelli (Gigi); also known for Meet Me in St. Louis, An American in Paris, The Bad and the Beautiful, Brigadoon, Lust for Life (1903-1986):

I allow an area for improvisation because the chemical things actors bring to stories make it not work.

I use colors to bring fine points of story and character.

I feel that a picture that stays with you is made up of a hundred or more hidden things. They’re things that the audience is not conscious of, but that accumulate.

It's the story that counts.

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from English poet, dramatist, novelist, and essayist Sir Stephen Spender (The Temple, Poems, Trial of a Judge, The God that Failed, Ruins and Visions) (1909-1995):

Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.

What we call the freedom of the individual is not just the luxury of one intellectual to write what he likes to write but his being a voice which can speak for those who are silent.

But reading is not idleness. It is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental.

The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness.

Memory exercised in a particular way is a natural gift of poetic genius. The poet above all else, is a person who never forgets certain sense impressions which he has experienced and which he can relive again as though with all their original freshness.

There is a certain justice in criticism. The critic is like a midwife—a tyrannical midwife.

All that you can imagine you already know.

An English poet writes, I think, just for people who are interested in poetry. An American poet writes, and feels that everyone ought to appreciate this. Then he has a deep sense of grievance...

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from American children's author Megan McDonald (Judy Moody and Stink series) (b. 1959)

If you want to write, find your splinter. Find the thing that pierces you and won't let you go.

If you listen to your own voice, unknown friends will come and seek you.

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from English children's author Philip Reeve (Mortal Engines series) (b. 1966):

I'm sure it came as no surprise to my friends and family when I became an illustrator and then a writer because, from about the age of five, I was one of those children who always had his nose in a book.

Even tiny children looking at a picture book are using their imaginations, gleaning clues from the images to understand what is happening, and perhaps using the throwaway details which the illustrator includes to add their own elements to the story.

I still feel, as I did when I was six or seven, that books are simply the best way to experience a story.

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from country music singer-songwriter Jason Aldean (My Kinda Party, Night Train, Old Boots, New Dirt) (b. 1977):

If you say, “I'm going to cut this song because I know the teenagers are going to love it,” well, then you're going to alienate everybody else. When I cut my record, I'm just going to cut the things that I like, and whoever likes it, likes it. That's too much work to try to figure out the demographic. That's too much like a business.

No matter what you do, you're going to have people who have something to say about something you do. You can't please anybody.

My goal is that when the last song is over, and you're walking back to the parking lot, you're already on your phone searching to find the next show.

I didn't get into music to become famous and I didn't get into music to become rich either—I got into because I liked it.

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from English children's author Chris Wooding (Broken Sky series, The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray, Poison, The Braided Path trilogy) (b. 1977):

Everything you write makes you better. But if you really need a tip, here's one: a good story begins in opposition to its ending. That means you work out how it finishes first, and then begin the story as far away from that point—in terms of character development—as you can.

We relate comics to the main super-heroes, but it's a great medium through which all sorts of stories are told.

Imagination is as close as we will ever be to godhead… for in imagination, we can create wonders.