“I tell you, struggle is what is missing in the lives of most young people today. If they think I'm going to support them while they create great works of art, then they've missed the point of my work, of my life! In the process of becoming a writer or an artist one has to be willing to starve. Struggle is the most invaluable experience of all. Suffering seems to be the inevitable fate of the creative sensitive types. Poverty, disease, death, unrequited love affairs, and disappointments of every sort fan the flame of the artistic spirit. The greatest works of art were not created by spoiled brats. They were born for the most part out of a sense of despair, and if not despair then just plain hard work. Somewhere along the line the artist learns the art of transformation.”

— Henry Miller

Reflections (1981)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I tell you, struggle is what is missing in the lives of most young people today. If they think I'm going to support the…" by Henry Miller?

Henry Miller 187

American novelist 1891–1980

Related quotes

“If all you boast of your great art be true;
Sure, willing poverty lives most in you.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

VI, To Alchemists, lines 1-2
The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio (1616), Epigrams

“Miss my love today
as I miss the stars that shine above
telling me one day my love
will come to me again.
Miss my love, I'd say,
is the only thing that I can do.
I just can't live with someone new
reminding me of her.”

Gilbert O'Sullivan (1946) Irish singer-songwriter

"Miss My Love Today" (song)
Gilbert O'Sullivan, "Miss My Love Today" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02Sq7JLYWIE (song on YouTube)
Song lyrics

“I am glad I have that artistic life in me... [I'm] a nobody in my field of art... I don't overestimate myself at all, and that's why I can't get that comfort from my work [landscape painting], which the Great [artists] have in their field of art. What else to say! 50 years after my death!! I laughed about it. Do you think they will remember me after only one year? [after her death] Dear heaven! No, that is really my least concern.”

Marie Bilders-van Bosse (1837–1900) painter from the Netherlands

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat uit een brief van Marie Bilders-van Bosse, in het Nederlands:) Ik ben blij dat ik dat artistieke leven in mij heb.. ..[ik ben] een prul op mijn gebied.. ..Ik overschat mijzelven niemendal, en daarom kan ik uit mijn werk [landschap-schilderen] niet dien troost putten die de Grooten op een gebied daaruit halen. En verder! 50 jaar na mijn dood!! Ik heb er om gelachen. Denk je dat ze één jaar daarna nog aan mij zullen denken? Lieve hemel! Nee, dat is mijn minste zorg.
Quote from Marie Bilders-van Bosse in her letter from The Hague, 29 March 1896, to her friend Cornelia M. Beaujon-van Foreest; as cited in Marie Bilders-van Bosse 1837-1900 – Een Leven voor Kunst en Vriendschap, Ingelies Vermeulen & Ton Pelkmans; Kontrast ( ISBN 978-90-78215-54-7), 2008, p. 29
Marie wrote her letter shortly after a quarrel with her friend Cornelia

“In conceptual art the idea or the concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive; it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman.”

Sol LeWitt (1928–2007) American artist

Source: Quotes of Sol Lewitt, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," 1967, p. 80. Cited in: Diane Waldman. Carl Andre https://archive.org/stream/carlandre00wald#page/7/mode/1up. Published 1970 by Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. p. 7

“Thank God – because what are you going to write about if you don’t struggle as a child? I don’t think that you become creative because you have struggled, no, but creative people are fuelled by anger and passion, and haunted by demons and memories.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

On how her miserable childhood may have inadvertently affected her writing in “The incredible life of Isabel Allende” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/10589928/The-incredible-life-of-Isabel-Allende.html in The Telegraph (2014 Jan 28)

“If you understand comedy, you understand life. Drama, death, tragedy – everybody has these. But with humour you've got all these, and the antidote. You have found the answer. It doesn't follow that because you are a good comedy writer, you're a happy fellow. I've got one of the most miserable faces in the world. I am only happy when I am working. If I'm not working, I get screwed up because my time is going, my life is slipping by.”

Eric Sykes (1923–2012) English actor and director

Quoted in The Guardian, Wednesday 4 July 2012 http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/jul/04/eric-sykes

“All my life I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console mankind.”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

"Odyssey of Faith" in TIME magazine (6 June 1960) http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,874166,00.html

“It simply makes sense that I should miss my parents more than they miss me, especially when you consider that they only loved me for thirteen years while I loved them my entire life.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Damned

Damned (2011)

“For 40 years, I didn't miss a single deadline, but since July, I have missed every one. I also, to my intense disappointment, missed the Telluride and Toronto film festivals. Having just written my first review since June (The Queen), I think an update is in order.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

"Roger writes to readers" Chicago Sun Times (11 October 2006) http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/roger-writes-to-readers

“Lord, oh Lord, will I return to you once, being a genuine artist. Will all those Art lovers once behold my works with reverence and the laurel of Art then adorn my head... I experience so ardently all the beauty of my noble career... And once again I call to you, it would be much better not to live at all than being disappointed in my feeling.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch text: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat uit de brief van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): God God zal ik nog eenmaal als een waarachtig kunstenaar tot u keeren. Zullen nog eenmaal al die Kunstminnaren mijne werken met eerbied aanschouwen en de lauwer der Kunst mijn schedel sieren.. .Ik voel zo vurig al het schoone mijner edele loopbaan.. .Ach nogmaals roep ik tot u, laat mij veel liever niet leven dan in mijne gevoelen teleurgesteld te worden.
In a letter of Jozef Israels from Amsterdam, 16 July 1843, to his friend in Groningen, pharmacist Essingh; from RKD: Archive, A.S. Kok, The Hague
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1840 - 1870

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Henry Miller 187

Related quotes

Related topics