I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.

inspiration freedom accomplishment art

About Frank Zappa

Portrait of Frank Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, songwriter, guitarist, conductor, actor, satirist, filmmaker, and activist. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works; he additionally produced nearly all the 60-plus albums...

More quotations from Frank Zappa

The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.

laws America fairness enforcement

As far as rearing children goes, the basic idea I try to keep in mind is that a child is a person. Just because they happen to be a little shorter than you doesn't mean they are dumber than you. A lot of people make that mistake, and forget how much value there is in raw intuition—and there's plenty of that in every child. They may not have verbal skills or manual skills yet, but that is no reason to treat them like they're inferior little lumps whose destiny it is to grow up to be inferior big lumps like you.

children parenting skills

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

creation art money sales

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something, we'd all love one another.

love power change songs

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

power self world

More quotations tagged with “art”

Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do.

—Eugene Delacroix

It is all very well, when the pen flows, but then there are the dark days when imagination deserts one, and it is an effort to put anything down on paper. That little you have achieved stares at you at the end of the day, and you know the next morning you will have to scrape it down and start again.

—Elizabeth Bowen

Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?

—Edith Wharton

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.

—Edith Wharton

maturity art novelty

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

—E. M. Forster

History

11 Jul 2015 Added