Being an artist doesn't take much. Just everything you got. Which means of course that as the process is giving you life, it is also bringing you closer to death. But it's no big deal. They are one in the same and cannot be avoided or denied. So when I totally embrace this process, this life/death, and abandon myself to it completely, I transcend all this gibberish and hang out with the gods. It seems to me that that is worth the price of admission. . Hubert Selby Jr.
About This Quote

When you are an artist, you have to have everything. You have to be willing to put in all of yourself. That means you are willing to get close to death. It also means that the experience is worth it.

Death is just another part of life. And when you are fully engaged in your art, then death is just another part of life that you are embracing.

Some Similar Quotes
  1. The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures.... - Oscar Wilde
  2. What we do see depends mainly on what we look for.... In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the colouring, sportmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same... - John Lubbock
  3. The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails - James Joyce
  4. In the case of Michel Angelo we have an artist who with brush and chisel portrayed literally thousands of human forms; but with this peculiarity, that while scores and scores of his male figures are obviously suffused and inspired by a romantic sentiment, there is... - Edward Carpenter
  5. Bless the poets, the workers for justice, the dancers of ceremony, the singers of heartache, the visionaries, all makers and carriers of fresh meaning– We will all make it through, despite politics and wars, despite failures and misunderstandings. There is only love. - Joy Harjo
More Quotes By Hubert Selby Jr.
  1. Being an artist means forever healing your own wounds and at the same time endlessly exposing them.
Related Topics