Art quotes

Artists are usually better at making work than at explaining it, but when they do explain it, they tend to cut through the fog that everyone else wraps around the subject. These quotes come from painters, sculptors, writers, musicians, and filmmakers talking about craft, failure, inspiration, and the strange position of trying to make something that did not exist before. They are most useful when you are stuck in your own work. Read them at the beginning of a working day, not the end.

• I have not failed. I have simply found one thing that is marvelously beautiful.

  Michelangelo

• The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.

  Michelangelo

• No one can see the color of my soul.

  Hildegard of Bingen

• Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

  Leonardo da Vinci

• Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently.

  Rob Siltanen · Apple Think Different Campaign

• The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

  Leonardo da Vinci · Notebooks

• I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

  Michelangelo