Artist Quotes

The writer concerned more with technique than truth becomes a technician, not an artist.

Salome had but seven veils; the artist has a thousand.

But at a certain point, you have to take your influence and find your own voice if you want to become a relevant artist.

Art is real and imaginary, two worlds rolled into one - the fulfillment of the artist's insatiable soul.

The artist's quest is to succeed in combining and balancing all compositional attributes and physical elements into those that are purely spiritual. That is the secret of art.

As an artist, I gotta stand up to my own work.

I knew I wanted to be some kind of artist from about 12. I met a neighbour who drew cartoons, and I had an idea I wanted to be a cartoonist - or something that involved Indian ink, at any rate.

Allowing artist-illustrators to control the design and content of statistical graphics is almost like allowing typographers to control the content, style, and editing of prose.

It's hard not to tell the truth with a camera. Artists are particularly good at that.

I've been approached by major labels every single year of my existence as an artist. Since 1996.

The artist needs no religion beyond his work.

To be first-rate at anything you have to stake your all. Nobody's an artist 'on the side'.

One was a Cartoon Artist with a heart like chiffon and a wit as accidentally malicious as the jab of a pin in a flirt's belt.

Every artist is unreasonable, because he or she is doing something that hasn't been done before.

I don't see myself as a great discoverer of artists, like Charles Saatchi.

You've got major artists releasing albums on their own and eschewing the major system. I think that breeds excitement and creativity.

I think, as an artist, whether you're making people laugh or cry or be frustrated or excited - the fact that you're generating some sort of emotion out of an audience is, to me, worth it.

... artists were intended to be an ornament to society. As a society in themselves they are unthinkable.

I think another way that you can really harm yourself as an artist is by buying into the mythology that it's really important.

I definitely love music that's coming out now, there's some really exciting fresh artists coming through which is really cool. I guess it's from old and new, where my influences are based.

That’s the power you possess as an artist. To find and express your own unique message.

I was raised to be some kind of artist.

I think as an artist that's the best thing you can have - a personal stamp on something.

I think that Van Gogh is really the ultimate crazy artist that we all think of.

I am in deep shock. I have lost a beloved friend [George Michael] - the kindest, most generous soul and a brilliant artist. My heart goes out to his family and all of his fans.

What record companies do these days is drain the blood dry of an album, take six singles off it, and harm the longevity of artists' careers by doing it.

When I was a little kid I wanted to be an artist or a painter. But once I got into boxing, all I wanted was to box.

Clown' was written when I couldn't find anyone who believed in me as an artist. Maybe those labels will think twice next time a young songwriter comes along.

Constant contact is what people require these days. Its tough on artists.

The people I look up to the most - politicians, actors, artists - are the people who manage to do a high-powered job while staying themselves. They aren't afraid to be nice.

I feel that whatever picture an artist makes it is in part a picture of himself - a matter of identity.

Before my sister, Sara, and I went to bed at night, my mom would show us books on Manet and other artists. Even then I was always really interested in how the women looked in the images.

An artist is someone with the gift to light up a dark room.

The most important thing for me as an artist is having an identity.

I've always thought, it's the artist that write the songs and make the records. And it's our responsibility to set the tone for what's happening in the industry. And I take that seriously.

I think so much of art is unconscious anyway, the artist doesn't know the real reason they're doing it. They're just kind of going along with it intuitively.

Artists always live in the cracks anyway, whatever culture they're in. They're usually accustomed to not having much money, to kind of roughing it.

We all know artists who like to collaborate, who like to work as a team. It all kind of depends what your habitual working method is.

Having your work in a museum is something we as artists aspire to, but I don't think that's something we need to worry about while we're alive.

As my contribution as an artist and a storyteller, I have to have some hope. I have to have some beacon of good at the end of it.

Love is the spirit that motivates the artist's journey.

Let each of us dream of a community of artists and work to make that dream a reality.

The artist who pictures sounds as colours, who feels the difference in microns between one sea green and another... is not attending to what the world considers important.

Artists are often poignantly careless about making and keeping friends.

The artist's task is to become a successful eccentric, a strange but wise duck able to venture out of solitary confinement and mingle among society.

As the artist matures she is continuously shaken by what she manages to discover: by the earth shifting beneath her feet once again, by her own amazed, ringing laughter.

The wise artist makes peace with the fact that he will understand less than he had anticipated.

Artists disbelieve and dispute society's most cherished notions.

An artist must struggle to accept the shape of this universe - and achieve some important successes.

Love is the spirit that motivates the artist's journey. The love may sublime, raw, obsessive, passionate, awful. or thrilling, but whatever its quality, it's a powerful motive in the artist's life.