Artistic Life Quotes

The supreme artist lives as closely as possible to replicating the perfect dream, with life unfolding in a manner that a person could never conceive or direct.

Kilroy J. Oldster

A person of large dreams does not allow other people’s opinion to damper his or her zestfulness. Overcoming fear of making an irreversible, lifetime mistake is the first step of living an artistic existence.

Kilroy J. Oldster

The artistic life is a long and lovely suicide precisely because it involves the negation of self; as Highsmith imagined herself as her characters, so Ripley takes on the personae of others and in doing so metamorphoses himself into a 'living' work of art. A return to the 'real life' after a period of creativity resulted in a fall in spirits, an agony Highsmith felt acutely. She voiced this pain in the novel via Bernard's quotation of an excerpt from Derwatt's notebook: 'There is no depression for the artist except that caused by a return to the self'.

Advancing towards a person’s dreams with confidence enables a person to move beyond restrictive boundaries and meet with uncommon success. Liberated from personal insecurities and eliminating useless second guessing enables a person to live an imagined life.

Kilroy J. Oldster