Words of Wisdom

“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success—but only if you persist.”—Isaac Asimov

“The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses, would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist…what that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art of inspired beings.”—Plato

“I must despise the world which does not feel that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.”—Ludwig van Beethoven, who died on this day in 1827.

“You can’t give up something you really believe in for financial reasons. If you die by the roadside—so be it. But at least you know you’ve tried. Ten minutes in the music scene was the equal of one hundred years outside of it.”—Robert Plant

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”—Pablo Picasso

“I don’t think there’s any artist of any value who doesn’t doubt what they’re doing.”—Francis Ford Coppola

“Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.”
—William S. Burroughs 

“Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.”—Lester Bangs

“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