“I want to dip up the fire, and I want to put it on paper. The closer I get to the burning core of my being, the things which are most painful to me, the better is my work.”

— Harlan Ellison

As quoted in Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, & Other Fields (1982) by Ann Evory
Context: I talk about the things people have always talked about in stories: pain, hate, truth, courage, destiny, friendship, responsibility, growing old, growing up, falling in love, all of these things. What I try to write about are the darkest things in the soul, the mortal dreads. I try to go into those places in me that contain the cauldrous. I want to dip up the fire, and I want to put it on paper. The closer I get to the burning core of my being, the things which are most painful to me, the better is my work. … It is a love/hate relationship I have with the human race. I am an elitist, and I feel that my responsibility is to drag the human race along with me — that I will never pander to, or speak down to, or play the safe game. Because my immortal soul will be lost.

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Harlan Ellison 79

American writer 1934–2018

Romain Gary (1914–1980) French writer and diplomat

La Nuit Sera Calme [The Night Will Be Calm] (1974)
Context: Gari in Russian means "burn!"… I want to test myself, a trial by fire, so that my I is burned off.

“My thoughts create things for me, they help me get whatever I want.”

Ralph Smart

“For me the most important thing has always been tennis, and that's what I want to get across the image I want to portray is a hard-working tennis player.”

Andy Murray (1987) British tennis player

Daily Mirror feature on Murray http://www.mirror.co.uk/topics/andy-murray/

“I idealize my directors. It's true. I need to. I need to. I don't know if idealizing is a bad thing or good thing. But I just want to get up in the morning and work to get a glimpse of thing of his eyes searching things inside of me. For some I want to go to hell and to heaven. It hasn't happened with everybody. There are certain people I idealize. Others are very good, and I want to please them, too, but in a different sense of the word.”

Nastassja Kinski (1961) German actress

As quoted in Denise Worrell (1989), Icons: Intimate Portraits.

“It is all right with me that my work serves a purpose. I want to have an effect on my time, in which human beings are so confused and in need of help.”

Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945) German artist

Quoted in Käthe Kollwitz: Graphics, Posters, Drawings (1981) by Renate Hinz
Other Quotes
Context: My work is not, of course, pure art in the sense that Schmidt-Rottluff's is, but it is art nonetheless... It is all right with me that my work serves a purpose. I want to have an effect on my time, in which human beings are so confused and in need of help.

“I wanted to burn down the 'École de Beaux Arts' with my cobalts and vermilions and I wanted to express my feelings with my brushes without troubling what painting was like before me... Life and me, me and life.”

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) French painter

Quote of De Vlaminck; as cited in Picasso, Matisse and Modernism in Paris 1900-1910, Sue Roe; Penguin Press, 2015; quoted in 'Becoming an Artist' on Widewalls https://www.widewalls.ch/artist/maurice-de-vlaminck/
Quotes undated