Artist Quotes

It is so much worse to be a mediocre artist than to be a mediocre post-office clerk.

If they're [his clients] not temperamental, I don't want them. It's in the nature of a great artist to be that way.

Scratch an artist and you surprise a child.

Generosity is a two-edged virtue for an artist - it nourishes his imagination but has a fatal effect on his routine.

The only original part in a work of art is the infusion of the artist's own character, if he has one.

The grace to be a beginner is always the best prayer for an artist.

Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.

David Cronenberg knows what we actors do as artists.

The greatness of an artist or a writer does not depend on what he has in common with other artists and writers, but on what he has peculiar to himself.

A figure skater is not just a figure skater who does great jumps. He is an artist on ice.

There's a lot of artists whose contracts are written in such a way that they do not get paid for what's happening on streaming services.

It was an epiphany when I realized you don't have to call yourself a linguist, a translator, a poet. You can call yourself an artist and you can do all these things.

All great artists know that part of their task is to light up the distance between two human beings.

We wish with our hands, that's what we do as artists.

I just feel passionately about a few things and particularly about helping artists get off the ground.

It is vital for artists to nurture and protect that which will make their vision unique.

I think, because I'm an artist, part of my job is to be a barometer, an antenna. It's in the air and it resonates with a lot of people to lighten up.

I really admire artists who take the time to recharge their batteries and not continually call on it. I think you can spot tired and jaded artists quite quickly.

Look, none of the artists who I admire or respect have ever shied away from a role because it might make them unpopular with somebody.

Artists are visionaries. We routinely practice a form of faith, seeing clearly and moving toward a creative goal that shimmers in the distance - often visible to us, but invisible to those around us.

An artist paints, dances, draws, writes, designs, or acts at the expanding edge of consciousness. We press into the unknown rather than the known. This makes life lovely and lively.

I wasn't allowed to grow as an artist. My albums were nicer to look at than to listen to.

I was always an artist. I was a broker to earn a living, but I was always thinking about my art.

The essentially unchangeable established order of things, slowly disappeared and was forgotten for a while completely...

As an artist, I've always wanted to participate in the dialogue of art with other artists.

Compared to industry in Europe or Japan, where industry was based on a craft tradition, we are sadly behind.

I do greatly admire Australian artists.

Every day you run into artists on the streets in SoHo or other creative people you want to do something with. There's nothing to match that chance encounter.

Being an artist is nothing, or at least, not enough; what you want is to be a poet.

What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers' time? In our great-grandmothers' day? It is an answer cruel enough to stop the blood.

When we neglect the artist in ourselves, there is a kind of mourning that goes on under the surface of our busy lives.

I see myself as an artist who happens to do cartoons.

When you hear my records today hear a vanilla sounding artist with no black inflection, although I was trying to imitate what I heard.

In those countries with centuries of a craft tradition behind their building methods, techniques are tightly coordinated under the direction of the architect.

The story that I wanna tell is pretty much about the way I grew up. Being bi-racial, growing up in a big city and being an artist.

I'm both an artist / filmmaker and a human rights defender.

Our settlement of land is without regard to the best use of land.

We have become a society where the artist is regarded as a self-indulgent superfluity, and the person who juggles stocks and shares is an essential part of the economy.

Too many younger artists, critics, and curators are fetishizing the sixties, transforming the period into a deformed cult, a fantasy religion, a hip brand, and a crippling disease.

The worst scientist is he who is not an artist; the worst artist is he who is no scientist.

I so much appreciate it when anybody tries to make something and tries to be an artist - I'm happy to see the work.

Documentary is thought to be art when it transcends its reference to the world, when the work can be regarded, first and foremost, as an act of self-expression on the part of the artist.

Elizabeth Peyton, the artist known for tiny, dazzling portraits of radiant youth, is now painting tiny, dazzling portraits of radiant middle age.

If nothing will finally survive of life besides what artists report of it, we have no right to report what we know to be lies.

The artist spends the first part of his life with the dead, the second with the living, and the third with himself.

I’ve been a con artist since I was 16 and trying to get my dad to buy me a car. I never succeeded, but I learnt a lot of tactics.

You have to see a building to comprehend it. Photographs cannot convey the experience, nor film.

Music is made by individuals. Some artists will be very politically overt in their songs, some will be more subtle. You have to be true to yourself, true to your nature.

Western history has been a history of deed done, actions performed and results achieved.

I've always gotten along best with artists.