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Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it.

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For an artist is not a consumer, as our commercials urge us to be. An artist is a nourisher and a creator who knows that during the act of creation th...more

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Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious.

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We, and I think I'm speaking for many writers, don't know what it is that sometimes comes to make our books alive. All we can do is write dutifully an...more

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When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony.

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Very few of us understand Honorable Bird, except to acknowledge that without his power and grace nothing would be written, painted, or composed at all...more

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The creative impulse can be killed, but it cannot be taught...What a teacher can do...in working with children, is to give the flame enough oxygen so ...more

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Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.

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What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be.

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When we are writing or painting or composing, we are, during the time of creativity, freed from normal restrictions and opened to a wider world, where...more

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The figure in the icon is not meant to represent literally what Peter or John or any of the apostles looked like, or what Mary looked like, nor the ch...more

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The writer does want to be published; the painter urgently hopes that someone will see the finished canvas (van Gogh was denied the satisfaction of ha...more

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Stories, no matter how simple, can be vehicles of truth; can be, in fact, icons. It's no coincidence that Jesus taught almost entirely by telling stor...more

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In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If ...more

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If the artist reflects only his own culture, then his works will die with that culture. But if his works reflect the eternal and universal, they will ...more