Artist Quotes

To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

An artist carries on throughout his life a mysterious, uninterrupted conversation with his public.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

Putting out commercial pieces and promoting them and trying to sell them to people is not necessarily what it means to be an artist.

There's a great difference between being popular and being an artist.

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

Works of art produced in the contemporary world are a further expression of that. But I don't think there is an active, ongoing nihilist self-consciousness in the artist.

I'm going to become the best-remembered artist of my generation by staying away from the party as often as possible. That way, people will remember me, not because I was great, but because I didn't cause them any later embarrassment.

People sometimes ask if I want to be a solo artist, but it just wouldn't be any fun being on your own.

I was always confident in my art and in myself as an artist.

Ah! My Lord! now I understand, Oh, yes! What a voice! What an artist! I understand all!

As a new artist there's always outside influences trying to tell you how to make a song better for radio and how to do your hair.

The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.

An artist is maybe not always having a normal life.

Computer technology is so built into our lives that it's part of the surround of every artist.

Why do we pigeonhole and label an artist? It is a sure way of missing the important, the contradictory, the things that make him or her unique.

If he's a true symphony artist, he knows better than that because he knows that the only truly creative musician is the jazz musician.

I did pose for 'Black and White' magazine, a prestigious, artistic publication, several years ago... I did this as a piece of art and make no apologies for the creative decisions I've made as an artist in my 20-year career.

The concept that an artist would be revered by popular culture is an immediate dismissal of his relevance as an artist.

Roman Polanski is a man who cares deeply about his art and its place in this world. What happened to him on his incredible path is filled with tragedy, and most men would have collapsed. Instead, he became a great artist and continues to make great films.

Do you want to be an artist and a writer, or a wife and a lover? With kids, your focus changes. I don't want to go to PTA meetings.

The transition state of manners and language cannot be too often insisted upon: for this affected the process at both ends, giving the artist in fictitious life an uncertain model to copy and unstable materials to work in.

A way you can get really good abs in film is you get your makeup artist to paint shadows - faux washboard. But if you see me in a movie and I have great abs, it means I have a great body double.

No doubt the artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite.

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

An artist is an artist only because of his exquisite sense of beauty, a sense which shows him intoxicating pleasures, but which at the same time implies and contains an equally exquisite sense of all deformities and all disproportion.

So there was a way for you to get promoted and survive as an artist without worrying about AM radio hits.

I think sometimes an artist can really lose sight of what made them popular in the first place.

Good taste is the first refuge of the non-creative. It is the last-ditch stand of the artist.