Endorsements
“This is the whole flaw of ‘emotional’ music. It is like a drug: you must have more drug, and more noise each time, or this effect, this impression which works from the outside, in from the nerves and sensorium upon the self—is no use, its effect is constantly weaker and weaker.”
– EZRA POUND on MAXIMALISM.
I had as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.”
– ROBERT FROST on ARTISTIC INDEPENDENCE.
“My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength. The more constraint one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit . . . the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.”
– IGOR STRAVINSKY on EXTERNAL CONSTRAINT.
“Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes.”
– RALPH WALDO EMERSON on HISTORICAL PRESSURE.
“This isn’t the Ouija board or the spirit-world we’re talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks. Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you’re going to be every day from nine ’til noon or seven ’til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he’ll start showing up…making his magic.”
– STEPHEN KING on CREATIVE IDEAS.
Behold the abyss of progress into which the abominable Musicians of the Future are hurling us!”
– FRANZ LISZT on COMPETITIVE PRESSURE.
“I’m a real believer in that creativity comes from limits, not freedom. Freedom, I think you don’t know what to do with yourself. But when you have a structure, then you can improvise off it and feel confident enough to kind of come back to that.”
– JON STEWART on EXTERNAL CONSTRAINT.
“Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits. That’s it in a nutshell.”
– TWYLA THARP on CLASSICISM.
“I don’t believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there’s one thing that’s dangerous for an artist, it’s precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.”
– FEDERICO FELLINI on ARTISTIC INDEPENDENCE.
Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium.”
– HENRI MATISSE on EXTERNAL CONSTRAINT.
