From Text to Texture: Transforming My Favourite Quotes into Generative Art

I’ve been collecting quotes that struck a chord with me for over 7 years.

Recently, I’ve been experimenting with Stable Diffusion (SD), a deep learning model capable of turning words into images.

I decided to have some fun and see what would happen if I tried to transform my favourite quotes into images.

The process was simple: add the entire quote to SD, plus a few style-related words (e.g. “impasto” or “negative space”), and hit “Generate”. I generated many images and picked my favourite for each quote.

I hope at least one quote or image strikes a chord with you as well.

David Peoples & Rutger Hauer — Blade Runner

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain… Time to die.


Ben Brooks — Grow Up

I enjoy being outdoors during mornings and evenings because I find that the sky is much more creative in its use of colour.


Fyodor Dostoevsky — Demons

There are seconds, they come only five or six at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, fully achieved. It is nothing earthly; not that it’s heavenly, but man cannot endure it in his earthly state. One must change physically or die. The feeling is clear and indisputable. As if you suddenly sense the whole of nature and suddenly say: yes, this is true. God, when he was creating the world, said at the end of each day of creation: ‘Yes, this is true, this is good.’ This… this is not tenderheartedness, but simply joy. You don’t forgive anything, because there’s no longer anything to forgive. You don’t really love—oh, what is here is higher than love! What’s most frightening is that it’s so terribly clear, and there’s such joy. If it were longer than five seconds—the soul couldn’t endure it and would vanish. In those five seconds I live my life through, and for them I would give my whole life, because it’s worth it. To endure ten seconds one would have to change physically.


Jean-Paul Sartre — Nausea

I felt such utter loneliness that I thought of commiting suicide. What held me back was the idea that nobody, absolutely nobody would be moved by my death, that I would be even more alone in death than in life.


Hiromi Kawakami — The Briefcase aka Strange Weather in Tokyo

I’ve come a long way, the cold seeps through my worn clothes. This afternoon the sky is clear, oh how my heart aches!


Ben Brooks — Hurra

I think being with someone you don’t connect with is a quicker path to loneliness than being totally alone. It’s something that leads you to think about the impossibility of coexisting meaningfully with other people.


Rafael Lechowski — Quarcissus

“But I lie to myself,
I tell myself that solitude is superior to union,
in my poor conviction,
and that there is only one eternal love: one's own.
But self-love is not enough:
just as there are parts of the body
that one cannot scratch oneself,
there are places of the soul that only another can caress!”

“Pero me miento,
me digo que la soledad es superior a la unión,
en mi pobre convencimiento,
y que sólo hay un amor eterno: el propio.
Pero no basta el amor propio:
¡igual que hay partes del cuerpo
que no puede rascar uno mismo,
hay lugares del alma que sólo puede acariciar otro!”


Victor Pelevin — Yellow Arrow

Andrei was suddenly struck by the thought of what a genuine tragedy it was for millions of light rays to set out on their journey from the surface of the sun, go hurtling through the infinite void of space and pierce the miles-thick sky of Earth, only to be extinguished in the revolting remains of yesterday’s soup. Maybe these yellow arrows slanting in through the window were conscious, hoped for something better—and realized that their hopes were groundless, giving them all the necessary ingredients for suffering.


Francisco Umbral — Mortal y Rosa

“Lives burning before my life, time consumed and running. Are they watching the spectacle of my time, the bonfire of my life? We give a light, when we are extinguished, that only others see. We do not see it. We go through life in flames, and no one warns us of the fire, so as not to frighten us. But how they see us burn. As I see the writer, the friend burning. We go between lights, between nights, towards I don't know where, through the city, talking, dreaming, inside the car, slowly, against the ice, the fear, the shadow, passing immense gaps of time, sleeping streets, crowds.”

“Vidas que arden ante mi vida, tiempo que se consume y corre. ¿Asisten ellos al espectáculo de mi tiempo, a la hoguera de mi vida? Damos una luz, al extinguirnos, que sólo ven los demás. Nosotros no la vemos. Vamos en llamas por la vida, y nadie nos avisa del incendio, por no asustarnos. Pero cómo nos ven arder. Como yo veo arder al escritor, al amigo. Vamos entre luces, entre noches, hacia no sé dónde, por la ciudad, hablando, soñando, dentro del coche, lentamente, contra el hielo, el miedo, la sombra, pasando huecos inmensos de tiempo, calles dormidas, multitudes.”


Charlie Kaufman — Synecdoche, New York

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won’t know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it’s what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn’t really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I’ve felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long I’ve been pretending I’m OK, just to get along, just for, I don’t know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen.

That’s it for today~

This was a fun experiment. I saw many aberrations (SD is awful at hands) and was often surprised by the results.

I’ll likely be sharing more AI creations in the future.

Cheers!