Artists Quotes

The human being now simply can't close his elected garment about himself. Obligations to one's fello...

Art isn't only a painting; it's anything that changes someone for the better, any nonanonymous inter...

Great work is not created for everyone. If it were, it would be average work.

At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.

Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art ...

Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting...

The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following...

There was nothing particularly striking about them except that they were artists of the kind that ta...

My proudest achievement has been the success of the shows and artists I have been involved with, bec...

When artists make art, they shouldn't question whether it is permissible to do one thing or another.

In America, we know to ignore artists if they're serious in any way.

Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between mom...

For the modern consciousness, the artist (replacing the saint) is the exemplary sufferer. And among ...

I have no idea how long Quisser was gone from the table. My attention became fully absorbed by the o...

All of us had problems, it seemed, whose sources were untraceable, crossing over one another like th...

What they, in their innocence, cannot comprehend is that a properly constituted, healthy, decent man...

Mockingbirds are the true artists of the bird kingdom. Which is to say, although they're born with a...

Well, Daddy, I used to believe that artists went crazy in the process of creating the beautiful work...

There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.

Collaborative workshops and writers' peer groups hadn't been invented when I was young. They're a wo...

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering hap...

But if modesty is interpreted not as diffidence or self-effacingness, but as non-overweening, a real...

I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.

Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeate...

. . . there were masses of pictures she had not seen; however, Lily Briscoe reflected, perhaps it wa...

You forget, my good man, that what the artist perceives is, primarily, the difference between things...

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.

It is possible, however, that the artist is both thin-skinned and prophetic and, like the canary low...

Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless ...

With cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoissers admire the "skill" (...

It is impossible to see how good work might be accomplished by people who think that our life in thi...

Her secret? It is every artist's secret--passion. That is all. It is an open secret, and perfectly s...

In Europe, being an artist is a form of behavior; in America, it's an excuse for a form of behavior.

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implemen...

But you're an artist. You don't believe in decency and honesty and gratitude.

Many incredible artists die before they were famous.

To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.

Art gives its vision to beauty not always recognized. And it surrenders freely -- whatever power it ...

Now, as I understand it, the bards were feared. They were respected, but more than that they were fe...

A genius doesn't adjust his treatment of a theme to a tyrant's taste

I find beauty in the grotesque, like most artists.

The blood of my motherland waters a magic plant that cures all ills. That plant is art, and sometime...

The first among mankind will always be those who make something imperishable out of a sheet of paper...

We do it because we care. We care that Vincent Van Gogh mutilated his ear. We care that behind a pil...

Innocence was gone from all our acts. Our habitual state of rebellion became a serious political cri...

Artists don't make objects. Artists make mythologies.

I've lived all these years among those who create nothing and change nothing,' I said. 'Actors and m...

Look, I don't see why bad artists - I mean artists who are obviously incompetent... - why they shoul...

The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.

Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with simil...

The space that I can call mine, that isn't full of Henry, is so small that my ideas have become smal...

How does an artist learn enough about life to fill a thimble?""Soli, I'm going to tell you. He needs...

The last thing we discover in composing a work is what to put down first.

The artists who stick around for a while are the ones who go, 'Oh, that's cool, never thought of tha...

I think that what most artists are trying to do is trying to understand. I think what distinguishes ...

They do not discover anything new after that, they only learn how to understand better and better th...

The best artists know what to leave out.

There are so many artists that are dyslexic or learning disabled, it's just phenomenal. There's also...

The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple — to discover what has not yet been do...

Here's one from me: 'You have to be aware that everyone else is thinking far too hard about themselv...

An artist is above all a human being, profoundly human to the core. If the artist can’t feel everyth...

As an artist I have always tried to be faithful to my vision of life, and I have frequently been in ...

Time and death: It's the ultimate vision of an artist at the end of everything. It's just what's the...

The most aggressive artists often hide their romantic side.

The real reason why so many artists now take to politics, ‘commitment’ and so on is that they are ru...

To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either schola...

To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either schola...

Artist communities love to bullshit each other and glad-hand one another, and there's no room for th...

Miss Mapp moved towards the screen."What a delicious big screen," she said."Yes, but don't go behind...

He had a theory that musicians are incredibly complex, and know far less than other artists what the...

All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.

The creation of a painting takes as much trickery and premeditation as the commitment of a crime.

Contrary to general belief, an artist is never ahead of his [sic!] time but most people are far behi...

In the case of Michel Angelo we have an artist who with brush and chisel portrayed literally thousan...

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result ...

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

More of me comes out when I improvise.

In children's art class we sat in a ring of kindergarten chairs and drew three daffodils that had ju...

In real life I fell easily under the spell of all traveling artists. En route to New Orleans, entert...

That is an artist as I love artists, modest in his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread...

Imagination is not the exclusive appanage of artists, but belongs in varying degrees to all men.

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no...

Writers and artists build by hand little worlds that they hope might effect change in real minds, in...

The artist must manage to make posterity believe that he never existed.

The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature.

The public wants work which flatters its illusions.

If you participate in life, you don’t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too mu...

You don’t make art out of good intentions.

On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its cl...

The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.

How many artists have created while drunk, high on laudanum, opium, chloral or amphetamines? What ha...

Apparently, now, though, we writers and artists are not allowed to give offence. We must not questio...

After all, Paul Robeson said, ‘Artists are the radical voice of civilization.’ Each and every one of...

Artists are those who can evade the verbose.

The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, t...

Edsel is the artist in our family. Art is something I know nothing about.

Who but the artist has the power to open man up, to set free the imagination? The others - priest, t...

...and as far as talent is concerned, there will be such an excess that our artists will become thei...

There are a good many people of the same kind as Harry. Many artists are of his kind. These persons ...

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.