Artists Quotes

Artists Quote of the day

Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.

As an artist I have always tried to be faithful to my vision of life, and I have frequently been in conflict with those who wanted me to paint not what I saw but what they wished me to see.

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

The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.

All true artists, bear within themselves a deeply rooted and often unconscious desire for transformation.

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

I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.

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

In the inner place where true artists create there exists a pure child.

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

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

More of me comes out when I improvise.

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.

The nation is bound together by its creative artists and not by parallel lines of rusting steel.

Art – the one achievement of man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised

Great artists need great clients.

[My job is] a very high trapeze act, frequently with no net.

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.

The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.

A nation devoid of art and artists cannot have a full existence.

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

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

Now there are no priests or philosophers left, artists are the most important people in the world.

We designers, we don't work in a vacuum. We need business people. We are not the fine artists we are often confused with.

...As an artist, you need the naysayers and the nonbelievers to add fuel to your creative fire.

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

Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

The very secret of life for me, I believed, was to maintain in the midst of rushing events an inner tranquility.

The blood of my motherland waters a magic plant that cures all ills. That plant is art, and sometimes art needs corruption as a kind of fertilizer

Artists live in unknown spaces and give themselves over to following something unknown.

The best of artists has no conception that the marble alone does not contain within itself.

Time and memory are true artists; they remould reality nearer to the heart's desire.

Being an artist means forever healing your own wounds and at the same time endlessly exposing them.

Artists don't make objects. Artists make mythologies.

My tastes and inspirational artists were always rather eclectic and diverse.

True artists are almost the only men who do their work for pleasure.

I find beauty in the grotesque, like most artists.

The first among mankind will always be those who make something imperishable out of a sheet of paper, a canvas, a piece of marble, or a few sounds

The noise around us determines how we speak. And how we listen. Just as a conversation suffers in a war zone, art suffers in a culture built on noise. So does our enjoyment of it.

Today we've learned to celebrate mediocrity. Back in the day we had creative artists; today we have created artists.

Can you really think artists and writers are the only people entitled to lives of their own?

It isn't that I dislike artists, but I can't stand anyone who puts on those ponderous airs of a man of character.

To write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance-- not in real life I hope. In real life try to be nice. It will save you a hell of a lot of trouble and give you more time to write.

Not only Freud but artists and writers were also interested in the unconscious. It was medicine that made the first steps toward modernity.

The loner who looks fabulous is one of the most vulnerable loners of all.

Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.

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

The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.