Artist Quotes

The body, in 'La Belle Noiseuse,' was the source of the artist's creativity.

As an artist, I've been very fortunate.

Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist.

I have inherited two of the most important brands in hip-hop, Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella. Reid and Universal Music Group have given me the opportunity to manage the companies I have contributed to my whole career. I feel this is a giant step for me and the entire artist community.

Any man who does not have his inner world to translate is not an artist.

As I get into it more, I want to grow as an artist, as an entertainer, and basically perfect my craft.

There's no greatest moment in the arts. It's a life, it's a continuity thing. You can't have a great moment because it's spiritual. It's a belief, it's a calling. If you're an artist, doing your own thing on your own, it's while you're doing it that counts. It's a process. If you get too elated, you can get too depressed.

They consistently hobble artists' in the name of selling more units then are surprised when the fans don't buy the lukewarm music this produces. So they then drop the artist.

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

If you only believe that you're an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that's quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works.

I think the definition of an artist is not necessarily tied into excellence or talent; an artist is somebody who, if you took away their freedom to make art, would lose their mind.

Now that I'm coming out with my own record people can see I'm a solo artist.

Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.

The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has.

The best thing is to always keep honest people around, because when you have a bunch of yes men around that know that you're making a mistake but let you go on with it, that's when it ruins your mind state as an artist.

It's possible and available to any artist to be himself or herself on their own terms, to be accepted and embraced by black people. You don't have to be a thug to get love from black people.

If I was just a fan of music, I would think that I was the number one artist in the world.

A great artist is always before his time or behind it.

I had the most reversed education possible. Every parent wants their son to be a businessman, respectable - me, it was the opposite. When I had an artist career my mum was like, 'Oh finally, I'm proud of you!'

As an artist I'd choose the thing that's beautiful more than the one that's true.

I think another thing is that we don't really want exclusivity. We accept that it is in the artist's interest to be on sale in every place where they sell music.

You have to write badly to write at all. If it's crappy, I will rewrite it later. But it will be mine. You can hear the resonance of an artist who goes into herself.

All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.

It's like Willie Nelson. You're an artist and you have different styles inside of you.

I just asked myself, what piece of that man's soul did he just chew off and swallow to get next week's assignment? You know, just to live, just to work as an artist, or to feed the family?

What marks the artist is his power to shape the material of pain we all have.

I am a leader. Leaders always get heat. They're always going against the grain. Jimi Hendrix got heat; Bob Marley got heat; Miles Davis got heat. Every great artist got heat. Heat means you're doing something right.

On the worst days, I don't feel like an artist.

For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism. It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian.