When a poet digs himself into a hole, he doesn't climb out. He digs deeper, enjoys the scenery, and comes out the other side enlightened.

A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.

There have been times I've felt so much art in my soul I grew sick of artists.

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.

Think outside the box? Indeed. But to add balance to that, one should not in the process forget what the inside of the box looks like as well. Those who are best at thinking outside the box do it not to puff themselves up, but to see how small they really are. As a contented fish in its fish tank appears to have a small, boring existence to us, imagine a larger, more perceptive kingdom (even by scientific taxonomy) to whom our contented existences may appear to be small and boring. This is where true creativity and massive perceptive abilities spawn a sense of intellectual humility; the kind which God adores.

One does not have to be a philosopher to be a successful artist, but he does have to be an artist to be a successful philosopher. His nature is to view the world in an unpredictable albeit useful light.

I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation.

The great artist is the simplifier.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

What an artist is for is to tell us what we see but do not know that we see.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

He will lie even when it is inconvenient; the sign of the true artist.

An artist is his own fault.

Every artist is an unhappy lover.

If you ask me what I have come to do in the world, I who am an artist, I will reply: 'I am here to live aloud.'

A man who works with his hands is a labourer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.

But we must not forget that only a very few people are artists in life; that the art of life is the most distinguished and rarest of all the arts.

Draw bamboos for ten years, become a bamboo, then forget all about bamboos when you are drawing.

To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.

When I was a kid I drew like Michelangelo. It took me years to learn to draw like a kid.