Artist Quotes

How can anybody learn anything from an artwork when the piece of art only reflects the vanity of the artist and not reality?

My mother was an artist and highly strung, whereas my father was much calmer.

I've been very lucky in the freedom that I've been given. Every artist needs two types of freedom: You need the freedom to - the freedom to come up with an idea or treatment - and then you need the other half of the freedom, and that's freedom from - somebody saying, 'This is great. This is how I want you to do it.'

I think that to explore the uncomfortable and the politically incorrect is the job of the artist.

I will always desire to play with Bruce Springsteen. He's the most inspirational, most dedicated, most committed and most focused artist I've ever seen. I like to be around people like that.

I'm a performance artist first; I'm a recording artist second.

What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.

The artist deals in what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

Yeah, the industry has always been both the enemy and the best friend of the artist. They need each other. That's the bottom line.

An artist cannot do anything slovenly.

Did any artist ever bring more pure joy to more people than Fred Astaire?

A certain death of an artist is overconfidence.

Men, when they fight in movies, it's a very different style. Harrison Ford was so cool when he had the whip, and Bruce Lee was such an artist that you couldn't take your eyes off of him.

Music tells you about the artist and what they were thinking about at the time, because the person has to think about it to sing it.

Some of modern engineering is necessary to good art. But I think of myself is a cultural artist.

The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.

The lifestyle that an artist can have, the freedom to wander in the landscape with no real pressure or deadlines, was a very attractive one.

Of course we've been fighting against stereotypes from Day One at East West. That's the reason we formed: to combat that, and to show we are capable of more than just fulfilling the stereotypes - waiter, laundryman, gardener, martial artist, villain.

I find as an artist if I'm not expressed relatively consistently, I get really depressed.

I gradually work myself into a frenzy as the shoot approaches, while we're choosing the costumes or working with the make-up artist. I'm not so much interested in my character as the film itself.

Whoever wants to know something about me - as an artist which alone is significant - they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognise what I am and what I want.

Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything.

I am, as they say, the classic starving artist.

The beautiful is in nature, and it is encountered under the most diverse forms of reality. Once it is found it belongs to art, or rather to the artist who discovers it.

I was a 10 million-plus selling artist.

I feel like I have the greatest life an artist could dream of.

I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.

Everything about the music industry takes away from you as an artist. They're always wondering what the next thing is: 'What do you have?' It's a very introverted process.

America tends to worship the modest talent because it doesn't put us in an uncomfortable position vis-a-vis the artist.

Believe it or not, most people think of me as a recording artist, but actually the way I think of myself and the way I earn my living is as a performing artist.