Louise Berliawsky Nevelson Quotes

True strength is delicate.

I think most artists create out of despair. The very nature of creation is not a performing glory on the outside, it's a painful, difficult search within.

When you put things together, things that other people have thrown out, you’re really bringing them to life – a spiritual life that surpasses the life for which they were originally created.

No matter how individual we humans are, we are a composite of everything we are aware of. We are a mirror of our times.

It gave me great pleasure to think that I could take wood, make it good, and make people like Rockefeller buy it with paper money.

You take a painting, you have a white, virginal piece of canvas that is the world of purity, and then you put your imagery on it, and you try to bring it back to the original purity.

Most of us have to be transplanted before we blossom.

I always wanted to show the world that art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.

I think all great innovations are built on rejections.

A whisper can be stronger, as an atom is stronger, than a whole mountain.

It's a hell of a thing to be born, and if you're born you're at least entitled to your own self.

I see no reason why I should tickle stones or waste time on polishing bronze.

I make collages. I join the shattered world creating a new harmony.

I never feel age... If you have creative work you don't have age or time.

I was discouraged about life, discouraged about people being blind, but I don't think I had a day that I ever questioned creativity. There has never been a day like that.

The outside wold pressures you into a mold, but if you don't accept that - you gamble with life. Call it gambling.

If you have got a living force and you're not using it, nature kicks you back. The blood boils just like you put it in a pot.

A woman may not hit a ball stronger than a man, but it is different. I prize that difference.

Greatness breaks laws.

I've taught, and the first thing I did when I taught art, was not to teach art.

The freer that women become, the freer men will be. Because when you enslave someone, you are enslaved.

I'm in tune with the right vibrations in the universe when I'm in the process of working.

We must create our own world.

My husband's family was terribly refined. Within their circle you could know Beethoven, but God forbid if you were Beethoven.

In my studio I'm as happy as a cow in her stall. That's the only place where everything is all right.

I feel that women 'and men,' but I mean the 'individual,' can be totally feminine and still be totally powerful.

When you are doing a piece you are with it. You don't want to wait until next week, when experience will have given you something else.

What we start with is a conviction to fulfill our being. Horses, trees fulfill themselves. Why shouldn't people.

It is as hard to take success as it is failure.

Another thing about creation is that every day it is like it gave birth, and it's always kind of innocent and refreshing. So it's always virginal to me, and it's always a surprise.

I've been so lonely for long periods of my life that if a rat walked in I would have welcomed it.

I knew that a day I took away from the work did not make me too happy.

I began to stack my sculptures into an environment. It was natural. It was a flowing of energy.

I don’t demand that all work be a masterpiece. What I am doing is the right thing for me - that is what I am and this is living. It reflects me and I reflect it.

Everytime I put on clothes, I’m creating a picture.

I think that in the sexual act, as delightful as it can be, the very physical part of it is, yes, a hammering away. So it has a certain brutality.

I still want to do my work. I still want to do my livingness. And I have lived. I have been fulfilled. I recognized what I had, and I never sold it short. And I ain't through yet.

My mother was very sympathetic. She was the one who really gave me the courage to take my freedom.

Character is the architect of the being.

I believe that the physical is the geography of the being.

In the end, as you get older and older, your life is your life, and you are alone with it.

Some of us come on earth seeing – some of us come on earth seeing color.

There's no denying that Caruso came with a voice?that Beethoven came with music in his soul, Picasso was drawing like an angel in the crib.You're born with it.

I only know this - that you can’t give advice to an artist.

Who is an artist? I say we take a title. No one gives it to us. We make our lives.

You must create your own world. I am responsible for my world.

I have made my world and it is a much better world than I ever saw outside.