Artist Quotes

I was forced to be an artist and a CEO from the beginning, so I was forced to be like a businessman because when I was trying to get a record deal, it was so hard to get a record deal on my own that it was either give up or create my own company.

Being an artist for my well being and as a living, I live in a place of observance and interest in what I consider to be the most relevant questions.

Over the years, I was never really driven to become a solo artist, but I was curious to find out who I was as an individual creative person. It's taken some time, but now I feel I've truly paid my dues. I guess I'm at a point now where I'm more comfortable in my own skin.

The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.

I hadn't been a recording artist all that long when albums came on the scene, and I was one of the first singers to point the way to how varied an album's contents could be.

The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure - if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out.

In the future, I see me as being my own artist and definitely not a ballad singer!

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.

I am an artist and have no right buggering about with verbs and split infinitives, which is what being a writer says to me.

I don't believe that recordings should sound radically better than the artist, I think that's dishonest. For example, I'm not a great singer but if I spent enough time tweaking my vocals, I could sound like one. But I don't, what you hear is pretty much what I sing.

It's nice if people ask to use your song. You have to make a decision as an artist how you feel about that.

Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.

Being called a conscious rapper is quite a compliment. It's a great thing to be. But as an artist, my nature is to not be in a box.

Can you blame them? We have to filter so much information these days. But it does make it difficult for an artist. I'm 46 years old now. I've had a lot of life experience and my voice has changed. People who expect the same old me are bound to be disappointed.

I always found the concept of a tortured artist distasteful.

Frost is the greatest artist in our clime - he paints in nature and describes in rime.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn't always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

The artist likes to seem totally responsible for his work. Often he begins to explain it, to make it appear as if it were a reasonable process.

If it is the mark of the artist to love art before everything, to renounce everything for its sake, to think all the sweet human things of life well lost if only he may attain something, do some good, great work - then I was never an artist.

I do not feel any artist can produce great art without putting great personality into it. It is always a piece of you that goes on the screen or the canvass.

The war is dreadful. It is the business of the artist to follow it home to the heart of the individual fighters - not to talk in armies and nations and numbers - but to track it home.

An artist, in my understanding of the word, should side with the people against the Emperor that oppresses his or her people.

I thought 'The Artist' was a perfect way to find a good balance. The artistic challenge is obvious because the film is black-and-white and its silent, but I did my best to make the movie accessible and easy to watch. I really don't want to make elitist movies. I really try hard to work for the audience. Audiences are smart. They get everything.

Scratch an artist and you surprise a child.

But I found that being an artist and doing accurate work is very difficult.

Of course, I would be depressed sometimes, and my Mom would be worried about me because I would just sleep to escape. Cause I was so scared of being a musician or artist, or whatever you want to call it.

I am famous because I am an African American jazz artist.

I am a horrible visual artist. I can't fix a car, sew, knit, cook, etc. Statistically, there is more I don't do than do.

I'd love to be an artist that's multifaceted. At the moment, I am not. But wouldn't that be cool if I was like, 'Yeah, let me pull out my guitar and play you a song.' I would adore that. I am so far not gifted in that way. But I am a very hard worker and a very determined person, so who knows?