I have never quite understood where quotes come from.  I’m sure most are pulled from writings of said person, but I am truly fascinated by the ones that were not.  Was Descartes sitting on the toilet and muttered “I think therefore I am”  what followed that? possible …”damn that was brilliant! I gotta write that down. No I gotta get someone else to write that down.  Great now I am going to spend the next two weeks trying to drop that line in an epic fashion at a toga party. sigh”

With that in mind here are some quotes that have really inspired me art wise lately:

“In asking the artist to have courage, we must ask the same of industry. The impetus to conform, so widespread today, will, if not checked, kill all forms of creativity, scientific and technological included.” – Paul Rand

This one is huge for me.  I have a bit of personal style, I have a vision of what my work could become, but I also have a local clientele who want nothing to do with it.  Who want safe, non threatening non thought provoking “art” What to do what to do…?

“I often feel that people come to me to be photographed as they would go to a doctor or a fortune teller–to find out how they are. So they’re dependent on me. I have to engage them. Otherwise there’s nothing to photograph. The concentration has to come from me and involve them. Sometimes the force of it grows so strong that sounds in the studio go unheard. Time stops. We share a brief, intense intimacy. But it’s unearned. It has no past…no future. And when the sitting is over—when the picture is done—there’s nothing left except the photograph…the photograph and a kind of embarrassment. They leave..and I don’t know them. I’ve hardly heard what they’ve said. If I meet them a week later in a room somewhere, I expect they won’t recognize me. Because I don’t feel I was really there. At least the part of me that was is now in the photograph. And the photographs have a reality for me that the people don’t. It’s through the photographs that I know them.”  - Richard Avedon

Amazing words of insight into the mechanics that make up a photograph.  An aggressive reminder to be the artist, not just the recordist.

“Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.” – Salman Rushdie

I’m not sure I have ever read a line that more personally described my own work to me.

What quotes inspire your art? I want to hear?