Artist Quotes

If something is successful with the audience, it's automatically suspect; the reverse is to say that not to reach audiences is the greatest compliment an artist can receive!

I've just begun to dare to think I perhaps am a bit of an artist.

This image of wanting to be an artist - that I would in some way become an artist -was very strong. I knew for a long, long time that that's what I would be. But nothing I ever did seemed to bring me any nearer to the condition of being an artist. And I didn't know how to do it.

Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.

What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

The product of the artist has become less important than the fact of the artist. We wish to absorb this person. We wish to devour someone who has experienced the tragic. In our society this person is much more important than anything he might create.

I'm the 1st black platinum artist in Detroit, solo artist in Detroit.

To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.

You want to throw yourself in as many uncomfortable places as possible, if you want to build muscles in uncomfortable parts of your body and grow as an artist.

Sometimes in this country, we don't focus a lot on people's experience and their resume. Mitt Romney would be the most experienced executive to be nominated since 1952. The fundamental task for the next president is going to be fixing things, cleaning things up, being a turnaround artist, if you will.

That is what the title of artist means: one who perceives more than his fellows, and who records more than he has seen.

A true artist, in my mind, is willing to fail sometimes, because if you're not brave enough to say yes and follow your gut, it's never going to be good.

An artist's duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany.

Once you're a Motown artist, you're always a Motown artist.

Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?

My name is Kurt Schwitters... I am an artist and I nail my pictures together.

It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry. If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art, or his art, or the artist part of him, than in him. After which let them take tea together three times a week.

Part of being an artist is being willing to be shocked, being willing to be surprised, being willing to be hurt.

The public so often want to freeze the artist in a moment in time when they were at their peak, and they want the artist to revisit it over and over again as if it was something authentic.

The importance of an artist is bringing new signs into a language.

Being an artist is dragging your innermost feelings out, giving a piece of yourself, no matter in which art form, in which medium.

I see and write things first as an artist, second as a woman, and third as a New Yorker. All three have built-in perspectives that aren't neutral.

Derek Trucks is a real good new artist. He's a young guy.

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

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

If a patron buys from an artist who needs money, the patron then makes himself equal to the artist; he is building art into the world; he creates.

It took a bit of talking through administrative people, but only once did an attorney try and get in the way of the process and say their artist couldn't do it.