144 Quotes About Artistry

Nothing I do is natural, realistic, organic or accidental. I'm never spontaneous, I'm completely premeditated.

That I isn't I anymore. It's someone else, the character who plays me, someone who's a better actor than I could ever be. I'm just the writer. Someone else is starring in my part. I remember him just well enough to try to write about him. A case of the negative sublime. I guess art's always after the fact. The real is imaginary, or imagined. Reconstitution, reconstruction, representation is all we're left with. Autobiography becomes biography in the end.

If you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, "Nobody's," In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat.

When we see things from a different perspective, they either transform into fair features or slip under the cloak of the collective unconscious… overruled by the artistry and allure of the overall piece.

A red nose is the clown's mask and my moustache is mine.

I'm not sure why I find it beautiful to devote oneself obsessively to the creation of something that doesn't matter, but I do.

In time, all great masterpieces turn into shameless creatures who laugh at their creators.

The work to be done will be that of a true author, a true artist. It will be done alone.

I think I've done the best I can do at the time and been as honest with myself as I can be and I can sleep good at night knowing that. - interview w/ MTV 2005