Buffy Sainte Marie Quotes

“Everybody's creative. We create our songs and our paintings, our families and our children. Every one of us is on the cutting edge of the future.”
― Buffy Sainte-Marie

“The key is in remaining just aloof enough from a painting so that you know when to stop.”
― Buffy Sainte-Marie

“That is, an artist who creates lots of work probably experiences prolific days and slower days.”
― Buffy Sainte-Marie

“At one point in this biography, I started a sentence with the words "tearing down" and in the editing process, she crossed them out and provided this alternative "creating in spite of and beyond." That simple reframing blew my mind. I actually felt a seismic shift in my brain and in my body . And I know I will think of this forever and ever. My own language has a tendency to be rooted in destruction. I want to pull things apart and examine them. While her language is rooted in possibility, a desire to grow, and explore, and persuade. This is just one way she models how to to thrive.”
― Andrea Warner

“You have to leave room in life to dream.”
― Buffy Sainte-Marie

“Some of my songs are like dreams, and when you go to sleep at night you don’t know if you’re gonna have a dream or what you’re gonna dream about”
― Buffy Sainte-Marie

“There is an exercise I teach at colleges: Get yourself a canvas and a bunch of acrylics and go into a very dimly lighted room. Dip a brush into one of the colors, slap it on the canvas, don't look, close your eyes, make a painting, don't look, turn the lights on and see what you've got. I think this releases people from the editor in their life that's always standing over their shoulder saying, "Oh, you don't have any talent; who do you think you are?”
― Buffy Sainte-Marie

“Grab a guitar, put some kind of strings on it, a banjo string, then a violin string, then a guitar string, tune it any way you want, and make some noise, and see what you get. And work on it until you get something that you think is interesting. That's all there is to art for me.”
― Buffy Sainte-Marie