Artist Quotes

O, had I but followed the arts!

I don't want there to always be this stigma of the "female" artist. "Oh, what does it feel like to be a female doing something?" That hurts me.

Berry Gordy believed in owning the artist for life and controlling everything: the money, the station wagons, everything.

A lot of artists write about the same things their whole career.

Artists invent things as a way of telling the truth.

I put priority on such artists who focus on the world of "oblivion" and who consider placing themselves into the world of "oblivion" as fundamental to their attitude for their expression.

You can usually tell when people aren't being authentic, but that goes for every artist, not just white artists.

To an artist, creating an image means being in love with it.

Everybody's an artist. Everybody's God. It's just that they're inhibited.

you don't need talent to be an artist. 'Artist' is just a frame of mind. Anybody can be an artist, anybody can communicate if they are desperate enough.

Why do they cover Paul's songs but never mine?

People accuse artists of being narcissists - of course we are! If we don't like ourselves, who's going to like us?

We artists have the dignity to tell the truth to the people, unlike politicians.

Artists and musicians of the Sixties were definitely into clothes.

Life with another person is always difficult.

I don't particularly consider myself just an artist. I'm a woman - I'm a human being.

I never wanted to be a professional artist; I think that's limiting.

Women artists are still treated differently from men.

I have been known as the minimal and conceptual artist for over five decades. I think I haven't changed much.

What we do really affects the world. Most of us think we can't do anything, but it really isn't true.

I never thought, "I'm going to be an artist". When I actually began to become successful in the art world I made it a point to say, 'I am a dilettante, I am not a professional artist", which is true.

I don't think you make a choice to be an artist. There was no decision for me. I've been expressing myself this way since I can remember.

Some people don't listen to my music because they say that I am an artist. And some don't want to go to my gallery shows, because they say I am a musician.

Luckily, I don't have to be anybody but Yolanda, because people don't expect me to be anything other than who I am. For an artist, it's a great place to be.

Authors and artists are still afraid of breaking away as far as [William Burroughs] did... And he did it in the 50s!

Politics is politics; art is art. If you play a political role, you have to stop being an artist.

You can never not feel like that, as a working artist these days. It's funny - time off makes me nervous, but so does time on. At least the pressure wasn't coming from outside.

There was a long time where I was an "artist" in quotes, who had no money. But I guess back then I also never had a girlfriend.

I think that it's much easier for a recording artist to become an actor than for an actor to become a recording artist.

Any artist who aligns themselves with a politician is making a category error because what politicians do is not on a human scale, it is on a geopolitical scale.

The choices a writer makes within a tradition - preferring Milton to Moliere, caring for Barth over Barthelme - constitute some of the most personal information we can have about him.

Can't a rapper insist, like other artists, on a fictional reality, in which he is somehow still on the corner, despite occupying the penthouse suite?

My greatest accomplishment is the freedom for doing what I want to do with my music...I love my freedom so I'm happy I am a free artist.

The more I grow as an artist, the more I think I become like my father as an artist. The more I diversify, the more I become like my father, which is true to who he was.

I was never shielded from the realities of what it meant to be an artist and that made me afraid to be an artist because I wanted to know that my life was secure.

As an artist, I like working with filmmakers that have the balls to kind of imagine the unimaginable. Those are kind of the radicals that I identify with.

One of the things I love about doing things that are creative is that I feel like it's my right as an artist not to be affected by the reactions of those people that are going to hear my songs.

The artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.

Art invariably grows out of a period when, in general, the artist admires his own nation and wants to win its approval.

Artistic temperament is like a king with vigor and unlimited opportunity. You shake the structure to pieces by playing with it.

...art had no moral responsibility. Art, he argued, should strive only to be a beautiful object entirely separate from its creator.

I had come down here, not to serve God as a craftsman should, but to show my people how great a craftsman I was. They cared not.

One of the most beautiful things to do is to paint darkness, which nevertheless has light in it.

[N]othing is more easily corrupted than an artist.

The highest duty of the writer is to remain true to himself and let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth the artist best serves his nation.

I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumours to my dogs.

The Artist, " an ancient sage had once said, "is always sitting on the doorsteps of the rich.

The artist is the closest man comes to being God.

To become an artist you have to be curious.

..it has always been so much my desire to paint for those who don’t know the artistic side of a painting.