“It comes to me as a desire to have something in the world. And again to quote Blake, 'It is better to murder an infant in the cradle than to nurse an ungratified desire.'... You might say that a creative person is a person who simply has a desire to have something, to add something to the world that's not there yet, and goes about arranging fort that to happen.... when you desire a work of art and make it, you've added to the stock of art in the world. Artists are one of the people who can do that: add to the stock of things.”
Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 15
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Carl Andre 32
American artist 1935Related quotes

“Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.”
Source: Proverbs of Hell

[Swami Nikhilananda, Holy Mother, 217]

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Prerequisite to Dignity of Labour (1957), p. 245
Context: It is not in a person's nature to desire what he already has. Desire is a tendency, the start of a movement toward something, toward a point from which one is absent. If, at the very outset, this movement doubles back on itself toward its point of departure, a person turns round and round like a squirrel in a cage or a prisoner in a condemned cell. Constant turning soon produces revulsion. All workers, especially though not exclusively those who work under inhumane conditions, are easily the victims of revulsion, exhaustion and disgust and the strongest are often the worst affected.

Asked what concerns him the most about the society today. The Aquarian, November 2009 http://www.theaquarian.com/2009/11/06/interview-davey-havok-afi-conspicuous-composition/

“I began to feel the desire for something more; I wanted to do something to make things better.”
On his ambitions as a youth, in an Academy of Achievement interview (28 October 2000) http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/gor0int-1
1990s