Quotes about drawing
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“She wants me to take out Patton.”

Barron’s brows draw together. “Take out? As in transform him?”

“No,” I say. “As in take out to dinner. She thinks we’d make a good couple.”

Holly Black book Black Heart

Source: Black Heart

Thinking

“To draw something is to try to capture it FOREVER, if you really love something, you never try to keep it the way it is forever. You have to let it be free to change”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Variant: If you really love something, you never try to keep it the way it is forever. You have to let it be free to change.
Source: City of Ashes

Love, Way, Change

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Inspirational, World, Imagination, Knowledge

“How could you not want to draw breath one more day? How could your own life be such a cheap commodity? But then I started to understand: when your existence is hell, death must be heaven.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Life, Death, Hell, Understanding

“We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Love, People, Light, Heart

“Antonin Artaud wrote on one of his drawings, "Never real and always true," and that is how depression feels. You know that it is not real, that you are someone else, and yet you know that it is absolutely true.”

Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Feeling

“Walter Mitty: To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

Life, World, Feeling

“A simple child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

We Are Seven, st. 1 (1798).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Life, Death, Feeling

“Without a sign, his sword the brave man draws, and asks no omen, but his country's cause.”

Homér Iliad

Source: The Iliad

Country

“That I could clamber to the frozen moon. And draw the ladder after me.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

“Should God create another Eve, and I
Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no no, I feel
The Link of Nature draw me: Flesh of Flesh,
Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

Source: Paradise Lost

God, Art, Feeling, Nature

“When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Written on the Body

“I believe that children in this country need a more robust literary diet than they are getting…. I will never talk down to, or draw down to, children.”

Barbara Cooney (1917–2000) American writer and illustrator of children's books

Children, Country

“Across the room, Hale smiled slightly. 'We can draw you a diagram if you need it.'

'No thanks,' Nick said. 'I think I've got everyone but you.”

Ally Carter book Heist Society

Source: Heist Society

Smile, Thinking

“To distract myself from tiresome thoughts, I have only to resort to books; they easily draw my mind to themselves and away from other things.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Books

“… do every day or two something for no other reason that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 4
Source: Habit
Context: Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

“The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2001)
Source: Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics
Context: Walking has been one of the constellations in the starry sky of human culture, a constellation whose three stars are the body, the imagination, and the wide-open world, and though all three exist independently, it is the lines drawn between them—drawn by the act of walking for cultural purposes—that makes them a constellation. Constellations are not natural phenomena but cultural impositions; the lines drawn between stars are like paths worn by the imagination of those who have gone before. This constellation called walking has a history, the history trod out by all those poets and philosophers and insurrectionaries, by jaywalkers, streetwalkers, pilgrims, tourists, hikers, mountaineers, but whether it has a future depends on whether those connecting paths are traveled still.

Star, Reading

“Tell me, if I take you to my room and put you in my bed, what do you think would happen?"

"I can draw you a diagram. Hint: I'm slot B, and you're tab A.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

Thinking

“I can't do this to you,' he said, drawing back. Emily put her hand on his and pulled the gun to her temple. 'Then do it for me,' she said.”

Jodi Picoult book The Pact

Source: The Pact

“Survive first. Figure out crayon drawing of destiny later.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Variant: Survive today. Figure out crayon drawing of destiny later.
Source: The Lost Hero

“I start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

“Some people are trapped by the belief that love comes in finite quantities, and that our kind of love exhausts the supply upon which they need to draw. I do not accept competitive models of love, only additive ones.”

Andrew Solomon book Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

Source: Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

Love, People

“this was the wonderful thing about strangers. they were big blank pieces of paper, you could draw watever you like on their impresionable surfaces”

Janet Fitch (1955) American writer

Source: Paint it Black

“Breathing involves a continual oscillation between exhaling and inhaling, offering ourselves to the world at one moment and drawing the world into ourselves at the next…”

David Abram (1957) American philosopher, ecologist

Source: Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology

World

“They erase my face with a layer of pale makeup and draw my features back out.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

“You can’t pay for tragedy with more tragedy, or draw life from death.” “I”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

Life, Death

“With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw its fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Books, Happiness

“Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating… but there are other ways to understanding.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Way, Understanding

“A poet is a painter in his way, he draws to the life, but in another kind; we draw the nobler part, the soul and the mind; the pictures of the pen shall outlast those of the pencil, and even worlds themselves.”

Aphra Behn book Oroonoko

Source: Oroonoko

Life, World, Way, Soul

“You don’t draw, and I don’t breathe. Not so much like last year”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“As far as I was concerned, we'd come to a draw: I hadn't wanted to come, and she didn't want me to leave. We were even. But I knew my mother wouldn't see it that way. Lately, we didn't seem to see anything the same.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Someone Like You

Way

“The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit with out speaking. This is the great paradox.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

People, Silence

“I can draw you a diagram. Hint: I'm slot B, and you're tab A.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

“….. it would be interesting to find out what goes on in that moment when someone looks at you and draws all sorts of conclusions.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

“It is a waste, for silence is pure.
Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are
comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great
paradox.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

People, Silence

“You have me like a drawing, erased, coloured in, untitled, signed by your tongue.”

Carol Ann Duffy (1955) British writer and professor of contemporary poetry

Source: Selected Poems

“She was all the things I wasn't. And i was all the things she wasn't. she could paint circles around anyone; I couldn't even draw a straight line. She was never into sports; I've always been. Her hand, it fit mine.”

Jodi Picoult book The Pact

Source: The Pact

Sport, Painting

“Listen before you draw your battle lines, lest you alienate your allies.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

For a Few Demons More

“Heroes rarely look the way we draw them in our minds: attractive, imposing figures with rippling muscles and strong chins. More times than not they are humble beings, small and flawed. It is only their spirits that are beautiful and strong.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: The Gift

Beauty, Way, Strong, Time

“The night was a time for bestial affinities, for drawing closer to oneself.”

Patricia Highsmith book Strangers on a Train

Source: Strangers on a Train

Time, Night

“I wonder that religion can live or die on the strength of a faint, stirring breeze. The scent trail shifts, causing the predator to miss the pounce. One god draws in the breath of life and rises; another god expires.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Life, God, Religion

“Maybe someone will know I didn't weave crowns to draw blood; that I faught against mockery;
that I did fill the high tide of my soul with truth.
I repaid vileness with doves.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Truth, Soul

“Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.”

Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian

As quoted in With Truth as Our Sword (2005) by C E Sylvester, p. 205

“I open a paperclip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this. A whimper, a peep? I draw little window cracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Suicide, Help, Hurt, Cry

“Come to a book as you would come to an unexplored land. Come without a map. Explore it, and draw your own map…. A book is like a pump. It gives nothing unless first you give to it.”

Stephen King book Hearts in Atlantis

Source: Hearts in Atlantis

Books

“Because when you love something, you want to do it all the time, even if no one is paying you for it. At least that's how I felt about drawing.”

Meg Cabot book All American Girl

Source: All-American Girl

Love, Time

“Writing turns you into somebody who's always wrong. the illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on. What else could? As pathological phenomena go, it doesn't completely wreck your life.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

Life

“Read the heart and not the letter for the pen cannot draw near the good intent.”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

Reading, Heart

“Any questions?"
"Ya why do your drawings suck so bad?”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Source: Bleach, Volume 01

Question

“Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quote from People, 27 September 1976
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1971 - 1980

Art, Cheating

“Why bother? I was right all along: the second you make yourself vulnerable to someone, they start drawing blood.”

Poppy Z. Brite (1967) Novelist, short story writer, food writer

“You learned this,” Kabsal said, lifting up her drawing of Jasnah, “from a book.”
“Er…yes?”
He looked back at the picture. “I need to read more.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

Books, Learning, Reading

“I'll just ask now: What is it about my persona that draws every insane, power-hungry nutcase to me like a magnet?”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Maximum Ride: Fang: Dystopian Science Fiction

“A common defect of modern art study is that too many students do not know why they draw.”

Robert Henri (1865–1929) American painter

Art, Study

“When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

People, Fear

“It is always from the depths of its impotence that each power center draws its power, hence their extreme maliciousness, and vanity”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

Source: A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

“The only moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the Q letter into a privet bush, but unfortunately there are times when it is unavoidable.”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Time

“What's the Future? It's a blank sheet of paper, and we draw lines on it, but sometimes our hand is held, and the lines we draw aren't the lines we wanted.”

John Marsden (1950) author

Source: The Dead of Night

Future

“You can make your superhero a psychopath, you can draw gut-splattering violence, and you can call it a "graphic novel," but comic books are still incredibly stupid.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Books, Stupidity

“How long have you been drawing me?”
He sighted. A moment later his hand came to rest in her hair. His fingers twined in the strands. “My whole life.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

Life

“No, scratch the word "career." Careers are for people who wish to advance. I only want to survive, draw a paycheck.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

People

“Certainly paradise, whatever, wherever it be, contains flaws. (Paradisical flaws, if you like.) If it did not, it would be incapable of drawing the hearts of men or angels.”

Henry Miller book Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

Source: Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

Men, Angels, Heart

“Oh yes. Draw your hem back from my mud, little sister.”

Philippa Gregory book The Other Boleyn Girl

Source: The Other Boleyn Girl

Sister

“I will draw you back to me. You shall see. By a chain of stars.”

Tanith Lee Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer

Source: Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer

Star

“How to Draw a Picture (XII)

Know when you're finished, and when you are, put your pencil or your paintbrush down. All the rest is only life.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Life

“It's a coffee cup."
She could hear the irritation in her own voice. "I know it's a coffee cup."
"I can't wait till you draw something really complicated, like the Brooklyn Bridge or a lobster. You'll probably send me a singing telegram.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Coffee, Singing, Waiting

“There is no such thing as a perfect drawing, especially if you're ametur.”

Mark Crilley (1966) Comic artist

Source: Miki Falls, Volume 3: Autumn

Perfection

“There are six reasons anyone does anything: Love. Faith. Greed. Boredom. Fear…" he said, ticking them off on his fingers; but he lingered on the last, drawing a deep breath before he said, "Revenge.”

Ally Carter book Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Love, Fear, Faith, Revenge

“I was not a lovable child, and I'd grown into a deeply unlovable adult. Draw a picture of my soul, and it'd be a scribble with fangs.”

Gillian Flynn book Dark Places

Source: Dark Places

Soul

“If something doesn't creep into a drawing that you're not prepared for, you might as well not have drawn it.”

Edward Gorey (1925–2000) American writer, artist, and illustrator

Source: Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey

“Every artist is linked to a mistake with which he has a particular intimacy. All art draws its origin from an exceptional fault, each work is the implementation of this original fault, from which comes a risky plenitude and new light.”

Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003) French writer, philosopher, and literary theorist

Art, Light

“In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Letter #158 to Theo (24 September 1880) http://www.vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let158/letter.html <br> Variant translation http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/8/136.htm: "I felt my energy revive and I said to myself, I shall get over it somehow, I shall set to work again with my pencil, which I had cast aside in my deep dejection, and I shall draw again, and from that moment I have had the feeling that everything has changed for me" <br class="br">1880s, 1880 <br class="br">Context: I felt my energy revive, and said to myself, In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing. From that moment everything has seemed transformed for me.

“She knows that whispers can be useful. Sometimes they contain real information. But usually they're fairy tales and lies. This is the worst kind of whisper, the kind that draws you in, gives you hope.”

Julianna Baggott book Pure

Source: Pure

Hope

“Draw, Antonio; draw, Antonio; draw and don’t waste time.”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

Time

“I just rely on natural talent," said Adrian, strolling up to the start of the Dragon's Lair. "When you have such a wealth of it to draw from, the danger comes from having too much.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

Nature, Wealth

“I call upon you to draw from the depths of your being — to prove that we are a human race, to prove that our love outweighs our need to hate, that our compassion is more compelling than our need to blame”

Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) British-American actress

Love, Hate

“You discover how confounding the world is when you try to draw it. You look at a car, and you try to see its car-ness, and you’re like an immigrant to your own world. You don’t have to travel to encounter weirdness. You wake up to it.”

Shaun Tan (1974) Australian illustrator, writer, and animated filmmaker

World, Cars, Travel

“He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Address on The Method of Nature http://www.infomotions.com/alex2/authors/emerson-ralph/emerson-method-734/ (1841)

Love, Time

“and I try
to draw the line
but it ends up running down the middle of me
most of the time.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Source: Ani DiFranco: Verses

Time

“They say they have noticed me drawing. I almost tell them right then and there. They noticed.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

“Prayer is the exercise of drawing on the grace of God.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

God, Exercises

“All the drawing lacks
is the final touch: To add
eyes to the dragon”

Diane Duane book The Wizard's Dilemma

Source: The Wizard's Dilemma

“Wittgenstein once wrote that when the eye sees something beautiful, the hand wants to draw it. I wish I could draw you.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Beauty

“Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.”

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) American poet

Source: The Complete Poems 1927-1979

Tear, Singing, Time, Housing

“… and clung more closely to the dear human love, from which our Father never means us to be weaned, but through which He draws us closer to Himself.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Love

“This is where you can find your soul if you dare. Where you can touch that part of you that you've never dared look at before. Do not come here and ask me to show you how to draw a face. Ask me to help you find the wind.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Soul, Help, Parting

“I need a watchman to tell me this is what a man says but this is what he means, to draw a line down the middle and say here is this justice and there is that justice and make me understand the difference.”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

Justice, Understanding

“When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

“Come to the book as you would come to an unexplored land. Come without a map. Explore it and draw your own map.”

Stephen King book Hearts in Atlantis

Source: Hearts in Atlantis

Books

“Truly good manners are invisible: they ease the way for others, without drawing attention to themselves. It is no accident that the word "punctilious" ("attentive to formality or etiquette") comes from the same original root as punctuation.”

Lynne Truss (1955) British writer

Source: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

Way

“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.”

Herman Melville book Billy Budd, Sailor

Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 21
Source: Billy Budd, Sailor
Context: Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. In pronounced cases there is no question about them. But in some supposed cases, in various degrees supposedly less pronounced, to draw the exact line of demarcation few will undertake tho' for a fee some professional experts will. There is nothing nameable but that some men will undertake to do it for pay.

Color

“It was the building from the drawing in my brain.
And if you don’t think that’s a weird sentence, maybe you should reread it.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Thinking