127 Inspirational Artist Quotes

In the world of creativity, artists possess the remarkable ability to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. Their masterpieces not only captivate our eyes but also speak to our souls, inspiring us to explore the depths of imagination and emotion. Whether you are an artist yourself or someone who cherishes the arts, the words of artists offer profound insights and motivation. We've curated a collection of the top 127 inspirational artist quotes that celebrate the essence of art and creativity. These quotes serve as a source of inspiration, empowering you to embrace your creative journey with passion and purpose. Join us as we delve into the wisdom of some of the most influential artists, allowing their words to ignite a spark in your creative endeavors.

1. “Every artist was first an amateur.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

2. “No man is equal to his book. All the best products of his mental activity go into his book, where they come separated from the mass of inferior products with which they are mingled in his daily talk.” - Herbert Spencer

3. “Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about… say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe.” - Rumi

4. “You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.” - Rick Riordan

5. “For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson

6. “The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.” - William Faulkner

7. “Whatever the source of emotion that drives me to create, I want to give it a form which has some connection with the visible world, even if it is only to wage war on that world....I want my paintings to be able to defend themselves to resist the invader, just as though there were razor blades on all surfaces so no one could touch them without cutting his hands.” - Pablo Picasso

8. “The artist is not a different kind of person, but every person is a different kind of artist.” - Eric Gill

9. “It costs nothing to dream and everything not to” - Rodney White

10. “In these electric times the criminal receives a cosmopolitan reputation. It is a privilege he shares with few other artists.” - Israel Zangwill

11. “This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't matter to me what your position is. You've got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. This is no time for anything else than the best that you've got.” - Toni Morrison

12. “Curiosity is the main energy...” - Robert Rauschenberg

13. “But will you not have a house to care for? Meals to cook? Children whining for this or that? Will you have time for the work?" "I'll make time," I promised. "The house will not always be so clean, the cooking may be a little hasty, and the whining children will sit on my lap and I'll sing to them while I work.” - Gloria Whelan

14. “Only by examining our personal biases can we grow as artists; only by cultivating empathy can we grow as people.” - Jen Knox

15. “It gives him spiritual freedom. To him life is a tragedy and by his gift of creation he enjoys the catharsis a purging of pity and terror, Which Aristotle tells is the object of art. Everything is transformed by his power into material and by writing it he can overcome it. Everything is grist to his mill. ... The artist is the only free man.” - W. Somerset Maugham

16. “An artist is like a woman who can do nothing but love, and who succumbs to every stray male jackass.” - Heinrich Böll

17. “Without an element of vulgarity, no man can be a work of art...I have to try and think what an artist is, apart from a hooligan who cannot live within his income of praise.” - Quentin Crisp

18. “Does it not occur to people that I might be artificial by nature?” - Maurice Ravel

19. “Suicide carried off many. Drink and the devil took care of the rest” - Robert Louis Stevenson

20. “I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.” - Marcel Duchamp

21. “Where Norman Rockwell is the Artist for the man on the street, O'Henry is his author.” - Sonia Rumzi

22. “All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone.. the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.” - Marcel Duchamp

23. “It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is less intense than the world of his invention and consequently his life, without recourse to violent disorder, does not seem very substantial. The right condition for him is that in which his work in not only convenient but unavoidable.” - Tenessee Williams

24. “The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case.” - Chuck Close

25. “Art-making is not about telling the truth but making the truth felt” - Christian Boltanski

26. “Sorrowful and great is the artist's destiny.” - Franz Liszt

27. “I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumours to my dogs.” - Andy Warhol

28. “The truth is, anyone who puts so much of herself and her life into art as you do must naturally fear any failure in that art as a potential threat to your life. And so you protect your art more than you protect your health or the common forms of happiness the rest of us have. And you probably have this in common with every artist you admire.” - Arthur Phillips

29. “The artist stands on the human being as a statue does on a pedestal. ” - Novalis

30. “[I]t was [Barnett] Newman who made the famously wry remark, “Aesthetics is for the artist as ornithology is for the birds,” - Ross Wetzsteon

31. “An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours.” - Irving Stone

32. “There is, perhaps, no more dangerous man in the world than the man with the sensibilities of an artist but without creative talent. With luck such men make wonderful theatrical impresarios and interior decorators, or else they become mass murderers or critics.” - Dame Edna Everage

33. “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.” - Julia Cameron

34. “The really magical things are the ones that happen right in front of you. A lot of the time you keep looking for beauty, but it is already there. And if you look with a bit more intention, you see it.” - Vik Muniz

35. “Weirdism is definitely the cornerstone of many an artist's career.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

36. “The philosophers write about things as they are and as they appear to be, but as an artist I find that appearance is everything.” - Gary Inbinder

37. “The cruelest thing you can do to an artist is tell them their work is flawless when it isn't” - Yahtzee Croshaw

38. “[in the true mad north] of introspection,where 'falcons of the inner eye'dive and die, glimpsing in their dying fall, all life's memory of existence.” - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

39. “A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.” - Criss Jami

40. “Science and art,... they seek the truth and the meaning of life, they seek God, [and] the soul, and when they are harnessed to passing needs and activities,... then they only complicate and encumber life.” - Anton Chekhov

41. “El Sueno de la razon produce monstrous. (The sleep of reason breeds monsters)” - Francisco Goya

42. “Color me....BRILLIANT.” - Jamie Weise

43. “It's always been most important for me to figure out "my space" rather than trying to check out what everyone else is up to, minute by minute. Technology is making it easier to connect to other people, but maybe harder to keep connected to yourself-- and that's essential for any artist, I think.” - Jay-Z

44. “The artist lives to have stories to tell and to learn to tell them well.” - Criss Jami

45. “Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.” - Criss Jami

46. “Authors can write stories without people assuming that they are autobiographies, but songwriters and poets are often considered to be the characters in their works. I like Michelangelo's vision, 'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” - Criss Jami

47. “What we must think about is an agriculture with a human face. We must give standing to the new pioneers, the homecomers bent on the most important work for the next century - a massive salvage operation to save the vulnerable but necessary pieces of nature and culture and to keep the good and artful examples before us. It is time for a new breed of artists to enter front and center, for the point of art, after all, is to connect. This is the homecomer I have in mind: the scientist, the accountant who converses with nature, a true artist devoted to the building of agriculture and culture to match the scenery presented to those first European eyes.” - Wes Jackson

48. “I want to be famous but unknown!” - Edgar Degas

49. “نحن لا يمكن أن نجبر فناناً على أن يعمل بخلاف ما تمليه عليه طبيعته وإلا كنا نجبره على التصنع والتكلف، وهذا شر لا يمكن أن يؤذي الأدب والفن، والمسألة في غاية البساطة مع ذلك، فإذا كنا نتيح للفنان حريته كاملة، فنحن أيضاً أحرار في تقييمنا للأعمال الفنية، فلا نمنح تقديرنا إلا لمن يقدم لنا العمل الفني الكامل، وهو العمل الفني الرفيع فنياً النافع إنسانياً واجتماعياً” - توفيق الحكيم

50. “Inspiration comes unawares, from unaccountable sources that have nothing to do with planning or intelligence. Let it cool ever so slightly, and you are left, pen or brush in hand, with no inspiration at all. Gifted people need not, therefore, make a song and dance about being or supposing themselves superior. They simply happened to be born with that fortunate, subconscious equipment of theirs, and the mystery exists independently of intelligence or ambition.” - Maurice Chevalier

51. “This assumption of the intrinsically repressive nature of collective experience and redemptive power of individuation is a staple of contemporary art theory and criticism. I would argue that a closer analysis of collaborative and collective art practices can reveal a more complex model of social change and identity, one in which the binary oppositions of divided vs. coherent subjectivity, desiring singularity vs. totalizing collective, liberating distanciation vs. stultifying interdependence, are challenged and complicated.” - Grant H. Kester

52. “To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence.” - Louise Bourgeois

53. “Today the artist has inherited the combined functions of hermit, pilgrim, prophet, priest, shaman, sorcerer, soothsayer, alchemist.” - Thomas Merton

54. “Where there is a true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity.” - Orhan Pamuk

55. “Miss, I'd gladly pay you to remove your clothes.” - David Scheier

56. “True art is thoughtful, emotional examination of how human themes impact the overall experience of existing. The rest is kitsch.” - Tiffany Madison

57. “The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being vanquished.” - Charles Baudelaire

58. “The mystery of esthetic like that of material creation is accomplished. The artist, like the god of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.” - James Joyce

59. “De kunstenaar is een arbeider lijk gij en ik. Hij maakt schoonheid, en hij wordt daar meestal niet voor betaald. De kunstenaar leeft en sterft met de arbeider mee. Al waar de arbeider naar verlangt, tracht de kunstenaar nu reeds gestalte te geven. Zo is de schrijver niet een dwaas die van sterren en maneschijn zingt, maar een ziener, een profeet over hoe het zou kunnen zijn. Dat is zijn plicht, zoals het de plicht van de arbeider is om de kunstenaar tegemoet te komen.” - Louis Paul Boon

60. “Vivent les fous qui sautent à pieds joints là où n'osent se poser les anges.” - Charles Daudelin

61. “I sat there and my love to him poured out more and more, and, lo, he flew down to a stump, and then to my knee. I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that the important thing is the love that goes out from oneself.” - Agnes Grinstead Anderson

62. “Quando ouvimos os sinos, ouvimos aquilo que já trazemos em nós mesmos como modelo. Sou da opinião que não se deverá desprezar aquele que olhar atentamente para as manchas da parede, para os carvões sobre a grelha, para as nuvens, ou para a correnteza da água, descobrindo, assim, coisas maravilhosas. O génio do pintor há-de se apossar de todas essas coisas para criar composições diversas: luta de homens e de animais, paisagens, monstros, demónios e outras coisas fantásticas. Tudo, enfim, servirá para engrandecer o artista.” - Leonardo da Vinci

63. “What is the difference between “creator” and “craftsman”? The one who creates bestows being itself, he brings something out of nothing—ex nihilo sui et subiecti, as the Latin puts it—and this, in the strict sense, is a mode of operation which belongs to the Almighty alone. The craftsman, by contrast, uses something that already exists, to which he gives form and meaning.” - Pope John Paul II

64. “Y el artista no es, como el vulgo piensa, una persona jovial que esparce por aquí y por allá obras de arte por mera exuberancia, sino que infortunadamente es por lo general una pobre alma que se sofoca con riquezas excedentes y que por lo tanto tiene que obsequiar algunas de ellas.” - Hermann Hesse

65. “I pastiche, I quote, I lie. Fake, forge, forage, fabricate, copy, borrow, transform, steal. I illusion. I’m a genuine deceiver, a shy sham artist.” - Shawna Lemay

66. “The Artist," an ancient sage had once said, "is always sitting on the doorsteps of the rich.” - Charles Bukowski

67. “Art does not have to be dull, to be effective; the artist does not have to be a bore, to be real.” - Burton Raffel

68. “The best incentive for an artist are the harshest criticism” - Miguel Ángel Sáez Gutiérrez

69. “As Aristotle said, 'Excellence is a habit.' I would say furthermore that excellence is made constant through the feeling that comes right after one has completed a work which he himself finds undeniably awe-inspiring. He only wants to relax until he's ready to renew such a feeling all over again because to him, all else has become absolutely trivial.” - Criss Jami

70. “A fi artist, în ochii lui însemna înainte de toate să fii supus. Supus unor mesaje misterioase, imprevizibile, care, în lipsa de ceva mai bun și în absența oricărei credințe religioase, se cuveneau calificate drept intuiții; niște mesaje poruncitoare, care se afirmau într-o manieră imperioasă, categorică, fără a-ți lăsa nici cea mai mică posibilitate de a te sustrage - sau doar cu riscul de a-ți pierde orice noțiune de integritate și de respect față de tine însuți.” - Michel Houellebecq

71. “Added to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist.” - Jean Genet

72. “There is nothing in the world which an artist cannot recreate into something poetic, ennobling. And why do we read these things? They are not facts, they do not improve our business skills, our techniques in manufacturing goods, the management of a home. That is what most of you will be doing anyway. We read these because they teach us about people, we can see ourselves in them, in their problems. And by seeing ourselves in them, we clarify ourselves, we explain ourselves to ourselves, so we can live with ourselves…” - F. Sionil José

73. “A true artist removes his heart willingly, allows constructive criticism to stomp it, then puts it back—bruised and aching—as he continues to strive for excellence due to the all-consuming obsession and love for his art.” - H G Mewis

74. “When you want to make the main color pure and bright, don't just keep adding bright colors on it. Just make the colors around the spot darker and dull. It will give the scene dramatical effects.I think the life is the same.” - Hiroko Sakai

75. “Wherever I wander off to, when I draw, when I paint, I get my life back. I am lucky that I am an Artist.” - Hiroko Sakai

76. “The privilege of struggling artists is ... the life being buried in what we can't really afford of* what a gorgeous life!!” - Hiroko Sakai

77. “I've always liked the minds of criminals, they seem similar to artists.” - Richard Linklater

78. “I am the eye that beholds... And I am the dreamer that paints the stars in the night sky... For I am the one they call artist, and you call Love.” - Solange nicole

79. “This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.” - James Baldwin

80. “Restoration is a skilled profession. You might even call it an art in its own right, except that it is frowned on to be original. First rule of restoration: follow the intention of the artist. Never try to improve on him.” - J.M. Coetzee

81. “Mediocrity is Death.” - Suleman Abdullah

82. “I am living breathing freedom” - Hiroko Sakai

83. “The soul of an artist cannot be muted indefinitely. It must either be expressed or it will consume the host.” - Gerard de Marigny

84. “‎"But when I fell in love with black, it contained all color. It wasn’t a negation of color. It was an acceptance. Because black encompasses all colors. Black is the most aristocratic color of all.... You can be quiet and it contains the whole thing." Happy birthday to Louise Nevelson (1899-1988)!” - Louise Nevelson. Sky Cathedral. 1958.

85. “Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.” - Pablo Picasso

86. “Growing up, I'd already decided I wanted to be a beatnik. A Bohemian poet, I thought. Or a musician. Maybe an artist. I'd dress in black turtlenecks and smoke Gitanes. I'd listen to cool jazz in clubs, getting up to read devastating truths from my notebook, leaning against the microphone, cigarette dangling from my hand.” - Charles de Lint

87. “An artist must have imagination. An artist who does not use his imagination is a mechanic.” - Robert Henri

88. “What makes an amazing artist? It's not his ability to impress but his skill in touching people's lives through his craft. When he does even a simple piece of work with not much adornment (fanciful words, colors) and it moves the hearts of his audience, it is considered to be a masterpiece! A true artist lets people enter a different kind of sanctuary out of the conventional. What makes his work standout is its uniqueness -if it has a HEART.” - Elizabeth E. Castillo

89. “Only the mediocre artist is always at his best.” - Victor J. Banis

90. “Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become.” - John O'Donohue

91. “Surely there is a knowing behind it all. There is a teacher, an expresser, a creator, an artist perhaps, a poet certainly that has designed and presented all of the clues that we need to navigate life with some degree of grace, and perhaps with a greater degree of happiness than we now have.” - Jeffrey R. Anderson

92. “Instead of chasing the idea of truth, what we should be doing is embracing the medium of drawing and using it for a purpose that fulfils our needs as an artist or designer.” - Peter Stanyer

93. “You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study... Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I'll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.” - Steven Pressfield

94. “A record deal doesn't make you an artist; you make yourself an artist” - Lady Gaga

95. “It’s an artist’s right to rebel against the world’s stupidity.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

96. “Every person who is really an artist desires to create inside of himself another, deeper, more interesting life than the one that actually surrounds him.” - Constantin Stanislavski

97. “Ordinary persons, he said, smiling, found no differences between men. The artist found them all.” - Alexander Theroux

98. “My main task as an artist is to show you either what you have never seen before -- or to show you what you have seen countless times, in a way you've never seen it.” - Mike Duron

99. “A true great artist at heart never ceases to create, continuously amazes and keeps sharing his gift despite barriers, judgement, fears and dreaded myths. If you stopped being creative out of fear or loss of self-esteem or pride, you were never an artist first and foremost for you have ran away from your true calling." - Elizabeth's Quotes” - Elizabeth E. Castillo

100. “She preferred the quiet solitary atmosphere, to create in her own world of paint and colour, the thrill of anticipating how her works would turn out as she eyed the blank sheets of paper or canvas before starting her next masterpiece. How satisfying it was to mess around in paint gear, without having to worry about spills, starch or frills, that was the life!” - E.A. Bucchianeri

101. “A steampunk nationBaby pollution rises up then the loving comes arraigning 'causeOur art's official and only partially artificialAnd our heart's in the middle of sharp hardened shards of metal butThere's not where it settlesBecause it's beating to the steaming of God's hottest pot or kettleAnd now we face it, this creation we made toTo save our craving for a synthetic rebelnation it'sOur safeway they make into a pathetic revelationIn our steampunk nationOur steampunk nation” - Criss Jami

102. “I wanna be forever young.” - Alphaville

103. “I am the wood frame, the bundle of ox hair, and the creative spark... my value unhangable.” - Marina Leigh Duff

104. “An artist is a provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one. It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one. That is the realm of the artist.” - Federico Fellini

105. “When you're socially awkward, you're isolated more than usual, and when you're isolated more than usual, your creativity is less compromised by what has already been said and done. All your hope in life starts to depend on your craft, so you try to perfect it. One reason I stay isolated more than the average person is to keep my creativity as fierce as possible. Being the odd one out may have its temporary disadvantages, but more importantly, it has its permanent advantages.” - Criss Jami

106. “I have always noticed that these artists and writers are very unbalanced” - Agatha Christie

107. “Art is ment to travel from your heart to your head and out through your fingers...” - Kelly Bingham

108. “...if you're an artist, you've submitted to authority...” - John Geddes

109. “As an artist, my talents are not mine alone to just keep. My creations have to touch lives, spread love and let my skills be used only in good things but should be selfless not through selfish motives. In this manner, I am giving the gift back to my Master Creator." - Elizabeth's Quotes” - Elizabeth E. Castillo

110. “Not anyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.” - Jan Pinkava Ratatouille

111. “At moments of great enthusiasm it seems to me that no one in the world has ever made something this beautiful and important.” - M.C. Escher

112. “Whether I'm painting or not, I have this overweening interest in humanity. Even if I'm not working, I'm still analyzing people.” - Alice Neel

113. “The hardest thing is to do something which is close to nothing because it is demanding all of you.” - Marina Abramović

114. “You say great artists sell their souls for their art?""Maybe," she ventured."That's true, I suppose. If you're doing it right, anyway. I've probably sold mine. Jack's certainly sold his. And you, I imagine.""I have not!" she said, anger showing clear in her eyes. "Not literally," he said hastily. "But we give up being a person to be an artist, don't we?” - Sam Starbuck

115. “Where the Divine and the Human Meet" shows how important it is to meet the world with the creativity of an artist, particularly in these uncertain times: "What do we do with chaos? Creativity has an answer. We are told by those who have studied the processes of nature that creativity happens at the border between chaos and order. Chaos is a prelude to creativity. We need to learn, as every artist needs to learn, to live with chaos and indeed to dance with it as we listen to it and attempt some ordering. Artists wrestle with chaos, take it apart, deconstruct and reconstruct from it. Accept the challenge to convert chaos into some kind of order, respecting the timing of it all, not pushing beyond what is possible—combining holy patience with holy impatience--that is the role of the artist. It is each of our roles as we launch the twenty-first century because we are all called to be artists in our own way. We were all artists as children. We need to study the chaos around us in order to turn it into something beautiful. Something sustainable. Something that remains".” - Matthew Fox

116. “Žene su me privlačile, ali sam smatrao da ja kao umetnik ne treba da imam išta s njima, jer to može samo da šteti mojoj umetnosti.” - Slobodan Tišma

117. “Smatrao sam da je jedina ispravna pozicija umetnika, pozicija izdajnika. Umetnik je onaj čiji smeh za pretke i tradiciju porugom se ori. Umetnost mora da stremi razlici, Drugom.” - Slobodan Tišma

118. “How are his poems?""He's not as good as he thinks he is, but then most of us feel that way.” - Charles Bukowski

119. “In such a person, sadness breeds purpose; finding inspiration in the darkness and often times, I believe, they will impress a hell onto their own lives in order to re-create it, that others might suffer the experience from the comfort of their armchairs. - Quote from Her Past's Present.” - Michael Poeltl

120. “For an artist, there's nothing better than having the opportunity to create a world that doesn't- but could- exist.” - Christophe Lautrette

121. “Of an artistic temperament, I deny that I am; yet I must possess something of the artist's faculty of making the most of present pleasure.” - Charlotte Brontë

122. “People listening to songs are like people reading novels: for a few minutes, for a few hours, someone else gets to come in and hijack that part of your brain that's always thinking. A good book or song kidnaps your interior voice and does all the driving. With the artist in charge you're free for a little while to leave your body and be someone else.” - Douglas Coupland

123. “All I wanted was my art and the chance to be the creator of my own world, my own reality.” - Charlotte Eriksson

124. “I didn't do music to live; I lived so that I could do music.” - Charlotte Eriksson

125. “What would you do if you saw something nobody else could see?”The tape gun fell out of Luke’s hand, and hit the tiled hearth. He knelt to pick it up, not looking at her. “You mean if I were the only witness to a crime, that sort of thing?”“No. I mean, if there were other people around, but you were the only one who could see something. As if it were invisible to everyone but you.”He hesitated, still kneeling, the dented tape gun gripped in his hand.“I know it sounds crazy,” Clary ventured nervously, “but…”He turned around. His eyes, very blue behind the glasses, rested on her with a look of firm affection. “Clary, you’re an artist, like your mother. That means you see the world in ways that other people don’t. It’s your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary things. It doesn’t make you crazy—just different. There’s nothing wrong with being different.” - Cassandra Clare

126. “The awakening an artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others.” - Steven Pressfield

127. “...she (the artist, the writer) doesn't wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition.” - Steven Pressfield