‘Art is the only way we can run away without leaving home.’
Twyla Tharp
‘I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.’
Madonna
‘To create one’s own world takes courage.’
Georgia O’Keeffe
‘I think that all women are witches, in the sense that a witch is a magical being. Don’t be scared of witches, because we are good witches, and you should appreciate our magical power.’
Yoko Ono
‘If you’re always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.’
Maya Angelou
‘Success is better than failure, but it doesn’t teach you as much.’
Jane Campion
‘When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. ‘
Audre Lorde
‘You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled, then something has been lost.’
Martha Graham
‘If you’re in a creative sphere, or if you’re hungry for experience, then those experiences don’t necessarily happen like rungs of a ladder or in a linear way.’
Cate Blanchett
‘I will yield to popular demands only insofar as they do not betray my own convictions.’
Clara Schumann
‘I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.’
Katharine Hepburn
‘Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.’
Sarah Bernhardt
‘It is not so much where my motivation comes from but rather how it manages to survive.’
Louise Bourgeois
‘At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.’
Frida Kahlo
‘Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you’re wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn’t love you anymore.’
Lady Gaga
‘Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.’
Stella Adler
‘I am so constantly inspired by the warmth and humility of the writing community, especially women, whether IRL or in online spaces. Despite all the cliches about writers having huge egos, in my experience they’re more often open and generous with their time and expertise.’
Veronica Sullivan
‘Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.’
Sylvia Plath
‘Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.’
Margot Fonteyn
‘Strength? It’s a mirage! Don’t have a prescription for others but I am creatively sustained by an over-indulgence in art in its high and low forms, conversation with artist friends, and on a more prosaic level, by the sheer joy (and sometimes fear) that comes from being out and about encountering people and their stories in unexpected locations, and then, taking that back to the studio and wrestling new work into shape.’
Merilyn Fairskye
‘We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already.’
J.K. Rowling
‘It is never too late to be what you might have been.’
George Eliot
‘I thrive on change. That’s probably why my chord changes are weird, because chords depict emotions. They’ll be going along on one key and I’ll drop off a cliff, and suddenly they will go into a whole other key signature. That will drive some people crazy, but that’s how my life is.’
Joni Mitchell
‘Believing in one’s own art becomes harder and harder when the public response grows fonder.’
Cindy Sherman
