The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all.
Nothing dies harder than a bad idea. And few ideas are worse than the ones we have about art.
When I went in, my editor said, ‘I hope you don’t think you’re a writer.’ And I said, ‘I hope you don’t think I’m a journalist.’ And, uh, turned out we were both right.
Sometimes, in order to go forward, you must first go back.
Making art is a rite of initiation. People change their souls.
If you want to write a novel, it’s the Divine mind wanting to express.
Writing-and this is the big secret-wants to be written. Writing loves a writer the way God loves a true devotee. Writing will fill your heart if you let it. It will fill your pages and help to fill your life.
Apologies are the art of spiritual housekeeping. They help to put and keep our lives in order.
As an experienced artist, I carry my work like a secret pregnancy. I am always aware of inner life and the need to protect it.
Workaholism is a block, not a building block.
All too often, it is audacity and not talent that moves an artist to center stage.
When we are angry or depressed in our creativity, we have misplaced our power. We have allowed someone else to determine our worth, and then we are angry at being undervalued.
What is focus and who has the right to say what focus is the legitimate focus?
From the first moment I handled my lens with a tender ardour, and it has become to me as a living thing, with voice and memory and creative vigour.
Leap, and the net will appear.
I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and at length the longing has been satisfied.
The clock is ticking and you’re hearing the beat. You stop by a museum shop, sign your name on a scuba-diving sheet, and commit yourself to Saturday mornings in the deep end. You’re either losing your mind – or gaining your soul. Life is meant to be an artist date. That’s why we were created.
My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art by combining the real and Ideal and sacrificing nothing of the Truth by all possible devotion to Poetry and beauty.
Beauty, you’re under arrest. I have a camera, and I’m not afraid to use it.
When I have had such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavored to do its duty to them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man. The photograph thus taken has almost the embodiment of a prayer.
Growth is a spiral process, doubling back on itself, reassessing and regrouping.