Louise Berliawsky Nevelson Quotes

[Good taste] is a nineteenth-century concept. And good taste has never really been defined. The effort of projecting 'good taste' is so studied that it offends me. No, I prefer to negate that. We have to put a period to so-called good taste.

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

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

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

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

Character is the architect of the being.

Greatness breaks laws.

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.

True strength is delicate.

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

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

Early in school, they called me 'the artist.' When teachers wanted things painted, they called upon me, they called upon 'the artist.' I am not saying that I learned my name, animals can learn their names, I am saying that they learned it.

I think people should think a million times before they give birth. The guilts of motherhood were the worst guilts in the world for me. They were really insurmountable. You see, you are depriving another human being of so many things, and the other party also knows it.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Most of us have to be transplanted before we blossom.

I never for one minute questioned what I had to do. I did not think for one minute that I didn't have what I had. If just didn't dawn on me. And so if you know what you have, then you know that there's nobody on earth that can affect you.

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

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

I think all great innovations are built on rejections.

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

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'm a work horse. I like to work. I always did. I think that there is such a thing as energy, creation overflowing. And I always felt that I have this great energy and it was bound to sort of burst at the seams, so that my work automatically took its place with a mind like mine. I've never had a day when I didn't want to work. I've never had a day like that. And I knew that a day I took away from the work did not make me too happy. I just feel that I'm in tune with the right vibrations in the universe when I'm in the process of working. ... In my studio I'm as happy as a cow in her stall.

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

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.

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

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

Another thing about creation is that every day it is like it gave birth, and it's always kind of an innocent and refreshing. So it's always virginal to me, and it's always a surprise. ... Each piece seems to have a life of its own. Every little piece or every big piece that I make becomes a very living thing to me, very living. I could make a million pieces; the next piece gives me a whole new thing. It is a new center. Life is total at that particular time. And that's why it's right. That reaffirms my life.

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

And I saw darkness for weeks. It never dawned on me that I could come out of it, but you heal. Nature heals you, and you do come out of it. All of a sudden I saw a crack of light ... then all of a sudden I saw another crack of light. Then I saw forms in the light. And I recognized that there was no darkness, that in darkness there'll always be light.

But when I fell in love with black, it contained all color. It wasn’t a negation of color. It was an acceptance. Because black encompasses all colors. Black is the most aristocratic color of all.... You can be quiet and it contains the whole thing.

In the first grade, I already knew the pattern of my life. I didn't know the living of it, but I knew the line… From the first day in school until the day I graduated, everyone gave me one hundred plus in art. Well, where do you go in life? You go to the place where you got one hundred plus.

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 never liked the middle ground-the most boring place in the world.

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

I was given the gifts of the artist, and the trouble that goes with them: So I have that blessing, and there was never a time thatI questioned it or doubted it.... For forty years, I wanted to jump out of windows.

What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable.

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.

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

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

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

We must create our own world.

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.

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