What we want from art is whatever is missing from the lives we are already living and making. Something is always missing, and so art-making is endless.
Jane HirshfieldRead
A studio, like a poem, is an intimacy and a freedom you can look out from, into each part of your life and a little beyond.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the connection between creativity and personal freedom, suggesting that both a studio and a poem allow for reflection on life.
Jane Hirshfield compares a studio to a poem, highlighting the intimate space they create for self-expression and observation of life. Both serve as platforms that not only allow one to delve into personal experiences but also to gain broader insights, symbolizing how art can facilitate a deeper understanding of one's surroundings and existence.
Themes
ArtCreativityFreedomIntimacyLife
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of creativity in education, this quote could be used to illustrate how art encourages personal growth.
More from Jane Hirshfield
All quotes →as some strings, untouched, sound when no one is speaking. So it was when love slipped inside us.
Jane HirshfieldRead
Tree It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books-- Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
Jane HirshfieldRead
I write because to write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery. A thought was not there, then it is. An image, a story, an idea about what it is to be human, did not exist, then it does. With every new poem, an emotion new to the heart, to the world, speaks itself into being.
Jane HirshfieldRead
Zen pretty much comes down to three things -- everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.
Jane HirshfieldRead
I thought I would love you forever—and, a little, I may, in the way I still move toward a crate, knees bent, or reach for a man: as one might stretch for the three or four fruit that lie in the sun at the top of the tree; too ripe for any moment but this, they open their skin at first touch, yielding sweetness, sweetness and heat, and in me, each time since, the answering yes.
Jane HirshfieldRead
Similar quotes
In art there are only fast or slow developments. Essentially it is a matter of evolution, not revolution.
Bela BartokRead
I don't want people at my shows to come out and say, 'I just saw a cool show.' I want them to say, 'I had fun at the show.' I want it to be a collaborative thing and be part of the audience and have them be part of me. I try to interact with everyone there and have them be equal to me because they are.
Billie EilishRead
Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page; reality is made of something else. It doesn't matter how "real" your story is, or how "made up": what matters is its necessity.
Anne EnrightRead
It's a funny thing about stories. It doesn't feel like you make them up, more like you find them. You type and type and you know you haven't got it yet, because somewhere out there, there's that perfect thing -- the unexpected ending that was always going to happen. That place you've always been heading for, but never expected to go.
Steven MoffatRead
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you-trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.
William ShakespeareRead
Organic buildings are the strength and lightness of the spiders' spinning, buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to environment, married to the ground.
Frank Lloyd WrightRead