Helen Merrill

Creative Arts raise a person to another level of consciousness as if you could imagine life before words.

I’m just an individual who doesn’t feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I’m working for me.

Life is tough and if you’re creative, it’s tougher.

The role of a museum of modern art is to make a good selection and identify what we believe to be the coming movements, and that requires taste.

It’s like telling Michelangelo: ‘I know you painted this dope angel, that was really good, but Michelangelo, I don’t think you can paint a cow.’

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

To this day I’m really not sure if I was playing Ziggy [Stardust] or if Ziggy was exaggerated aspects of my own personality. A fair amount of psychological baggage was undoubtedly coming out through the character. Because I felt awkward and nervous and inadequate with myself, it felt easier to be somebody else.

Good art will speak to you if you give it a chance.

One of the things about creativity is you can be in denial about these things. When I found out I had cancer, there were four hours in which I was pounding my head on the marble kitchen top saying, “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it.” But then I felt as if this little army in uniform was flooding me. They had come to help me fight it. I felt really strong about it after that. It was one of the strongest periods of my life.

If you hold onto the beauty and inspiration and the clarity that is music, you will have an anchor, you will not be too far swayed by what the world is.

Make the best of every moment. We’re not evolving. We’re not going anywhere.

I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.

Have no fear of perfection. You’ll never reach it.

Everybody has that feeling when they look at a work of art and it’s right, that sudden familiarity, a sort of…recognition, as though they were creating it themselves, as though it were being created through them while they look at it or listen to it.

Nothing will stop you from being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.