“The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell.”
More from Steven Pressfield on Art
“...she (the artist, the writer) doesn't wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition.”
“The Muse honors the working stiff.”
“The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work.”
“The awakening an artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others.”
“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.”
“To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.”
Others on Art
Picasso
18 quotes“I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.”
Vincent van Gogh
13 quotes“Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.”
Michelangelo
12 quotes“Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.”
Susan Sontag
10 quotes“The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality and eventually in one's own.”
John Keats
10 quotes“Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.”
Wallace Stevens
8 quotes“Intolerance respecting other people's religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other peop...”
Percy Shelley
8 quotes“Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.”
Charles Baudelaire
8 quotes“Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.”
Beethoven
8 quotes“Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.”
Ansel Adams
7 quotes“A photograph is usually looked at- seldom looked into.”
John Ruskin
7 quotes“We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful...”
Frank Lloyd Wright
7 quotes“Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art.”