Artist You Quotes & Sayings

Nobody catches you if you fall. — Siren Waroe

As an artist, as an actor, as a writer, you have to use what's personal to you. You have to be personal about your work; otherwise, it doesn't ring true. — Alan Alda

I always wrote, you know, but it was just this thing I did; what I intended was to become a terribly famous artist, perhaps with a stopover as a singer. — Holly Lisle

Only soldiers and labouring men can appreciate how glorious it really is to lie late in bed in winter-time. When your life revolves around having to to be at work at seven o'clock in the morning you know everything about that ghastly lep up still half asleep and the rush to put your head under a tap of ice-cold water with the barbarous object of shocking yourself awake. — Maurice Chevalier

Find something you really love doing and mix it with something you really care about. That's why I've had such longevity as an artist. I really, really care about ending violence against women, and I really, really love playing music. It's super enjoyable! — Kathleen Hanna

Do you know why our poetry today and especially our philosophy are such dead issues? Because they've cut themselves off from life. Now, Greece idealized on life's own level: an artist's life was already a poetic achievement; a philosopher's life was an enactment of his philosophy; and when they were a part of life that way, instead of ignoring each other, philosophy could nourish poetry, poetry express philosophy, and together achieve an admirable persuasiveness. Today beauty no longer acts; and action no longer bothers about being beautiful; and wisdom operates on the sidelines. — Andre Gide

Sometimes magazines will take artist's creative choices too literally; they assume that I actually live the way I do in music videos. For example: the whole "Dirty" thing. Do you think I wear chaps to the grocery store? — Christina Aguilera

The first and most important thing is to remain free, free in each line you undertake, in your ideas and in your political action, in your moral conduct. The artist especially must remain free from all outer restraints. — Hans Hartung

Every writer has to make an emotional journey from artist sitting in attic to being part of a business. The writer of a film is like Tinkerbell. You are only there because people believe in you. The moment they dont, because youre a pain the arse, youve lost. — Julian Fellowes

If I had the capabilities of being something other than I am, I would. It's no fun being an artist. You know what it's like, writing, it's torture. — John Lennon

I don't think radio is selling records like they used to. They'd hawk the song and hawk the artist and you'd get so excited, you'd stop your car and go into the nearest record store. — Herb Alpert

As an artist your trajectory just has to keep going up. the thing that subverts your next body of work is the work you've taken before. — Sally Mann

I don't love the postmodern statement: "You shouldn't be spiritual if you are the artist." — Hiroshi Sugimoto

Music is cyclical and as an artist and songwriter, you need to be able to predict what trend is coming next. — Wendy Starland

I think art is sublimated libido. You can't be a eunuch priest, and you can't be a eunuch artist. — Anthony Burgess

One song will launch you, but you don't want to be a one-song artist. — Michael Bolton

As for the industry, it has certainly changed. I think with all of these television shows and YouTube and the internet, you have so much less time to develop as an artist and perfect your craft. So many things today are "instant" and, that's not always a good thing. — Olivia Newton-John

And to celebrate I will create a series of masterpieces showing how wrong-headed and primitive you and your ideologies are, and it is this that will pave the way to the new truth! As the artist, everyone will pay attention to me, while without a body of art to speak for you... no one will ever even remember your name!" Monsters 101, Book Ten: Class Dismissed — Muhammad Rasheed

I think the most important thing for an artist is to stay true to who you are. I want to stay as authentic as possible, as that's how we're going with our team. — Daya

THE ARTIST'S LIFE Are you a born writer? — Steven Pressfield

The whole 'serious artist' thing is very damaging. The powers that be will steer you towards your own demise. One thing I've learned is that it's not very glamourous, and my problems are no different from anybody else's. — Dave Gahan

I had already established, as you know, that it was logically impossible for Kenneth to be distressed by anything that might occur between Ned and myself; but Kenneth, being an artist, has perhaps not studied logic and is unaware of the impossibility. — Sarah Caudwell

How can you measure the contribution that artists make to society? — John Kurtz

You know," Kavita begins, "I think I can pick out my own furniture. I am an artist after all. I do have some taste."
"No you don't." Nick plainly states. "No man has taste. Besides, I didn't pick it out, she did. Wives are good for things like that. — Carroll Bryant

Every musician in the known universe has signed a bad piece of paper, myself included. But it's really very simple. You're the artist. It's your picture that's going on the CD cover, nobody else's. Protect yourself. Get a good lawyer. You'll kick yourself later if you don't. — Bun E. Carlos

I worked selling tickets for Dodger Stadium; I delivered pizza; I did every job under the sun. It's the part that sucks as an artist. But I've learned at the end of the day you just have to enjoy your life. — Jeremy Luke

We singer-songwriter people, we're used to getting up and doing our own thing in front of people, and we're it. We're the band, artist, writer, producer, front man. We're the whole thing. You develop, it's not smugness, but this self-reliance, that can limit your creativity. When you're willing and able to invite others into it, you wind up getting a piece of work that's bigger and better than anything you ever imagined it could be. — Andy Wilkinson

As an artist, I think you always have to take care of yourself as a person probably even more than the average person because your body is so important to your art. — Josh Young

It'll always be you and me Krys. No matter what." That's better than I love you, better than I miss you or I'm sorry. Why? Because it says that no matter how dumb and spoiled I act or how misunderstood she is, that we'll be together. — Artist Arthur

I feel my job as an artist is to drive people to country radio. That's my job as a country artist. So these streaming places, especially these on-demand streaming places, where you can just push a button and hear it as many times as you want, like YouTube, any of that stuff, that's taking all the ears away from country radio. — Garth Brooks

I never wanted to study art. And I don't think you need to study art if you are an artist. It's even dangerous to go to school. You need to do whatever you want, as you want. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Let's get one thing clear between us, Shiloh. I would never laugh at you. I might tease the dickens out of you, but I would never, ever make fun of you. That's not who I am. I don't believe in humiliating another person. It's not in my DNA. — Lindsay McKenna

Which are you? ... competen t, inspiring, passionate, obsessed, provocative, impatient, hungry, driven, adoring, inspired, an artist, a genius, someone who cares ... ?
With all these remarkable, powerful, important options available to each of us, why do so many of us default to competent? — Seth Godin

Making a judgment, taking a stand and then acting against an injustice or acting to support excellence is the stuff of the everyman hero. If you are an aspiring artist and you wish to avoid "judgments," you'll find that you have nothing to say. — Steven Pressfield

A piece of art is part of its creator, you cannot split them apart. You cannot like one and dislike another. — Sameh Elsayed

You can only be free as an artist if you're free as a person. — Randy Jackson

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist. — Taylor Swift

Fifteen minutes of fame doesn't make a career. An article in a magazine, newspaper, interview on television or multiple print ads may stroke your ego, but nothing much else. An artist's career is a lifetime venture. Just because an artist is on top doesn't mean they are sheltered from a crash. As has been stated, the higher you climb, the harder you fall. — Jack White

Wanting to work is a luxury; having to work is not. If you're an artist, an actor, and you don't have to work, then you do work that you wanna do. — Steve Guttenberg

Every young artist has to do it one way, his [or her] way, and the hell with patterns. Remember who you are and where you are and what you are doing ... And never take advice, including this. — Katherine Anne Porter

If a record label will sign you in order for you to be moulded into something that can make more money for them, then you should get out of there if you're that artist. — Matt Corby

If you imitate the forms of a single artist through constant practice, your intelligence would have to be crude indeed for you not to get some nourishment from them. — Cennino Cennini

Thinking of that movie 'The Artist'; if anyone ever needed to reach anyone, I'm just thinking they didn't have cell phones, they didn't have Internet, they didn't have email, so I always wonder how it was back then where you had to be home if you needed to get a phone call; otherwise, people couldn't get a hold of you. — Edy Ganem

Fortunately, artists can live off their works, if you're creative at how you do it. If you just depend on the videos and the radio, you're at a loss. — Talib Kweli

A degree in art doesn't automatically make you an artist any more than lacking a degree precludes you from becoming an artist. — Ted Orland

It's give-and-take and back-and-forth, that constantly allows you to grow as an artist and as a human being. — Hilary Swank

Remember: It costs nothing to encourage an artist, and the potential benefits are staggering. A pat on the back to an artist now could one day result in your favorite film, or the cartoon you love to get stoned watching, or the song that saves your life. Discourage an artist, you get absolutely nothing in return, ever. — Kevin Smith

It starts off like climbing a tree or solving a puzzle - poetry, if nothing else, is just fun to write. But deeper into each and every piece, you no longer hesitate to call it work. It's passion. A poet's sense of lyrical accomplishment is then his food and water, his means of survival. — Criss Jami

It keeps me in touch with younger musicians who are constantly saying, 'Have you heard this new artist, or this new guitar player?' It keeps you reaching. — Gary Burton

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. — Hamish Linklater

Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination. — W. Somerset Maugham

Do you know the reason why poetry and philosophy are nothing but dead-letter nowadays? It is because they have severed themselves from life. In Greece, ideas went hand-in-hand with life; so that the artist's life was already a poetic realisation, the philosopher's life a putting into action of his philosophy; in this way, as both philosophy and poetry took part in life, instead of remaining unacquainted with each other, philosophy provided food for poetry, and poetry gave expression to philosophy - and the result was admirably persuasive. Nowadays beauty no longer acts; action no longer desires to be beautiful; and wisdom works in a sphere apart. — Andre Gide

As an artist, what you do is you put out material constantly. Whether it's films, or TV shows, music ... and you know, you hope people respond to it. You always have to know, as well, that not everybody's gonna like it. And that's okay. It's not for everyone. It's just for the crusty nugs. — Pauly Shore

I want to marry you, Malda - because I love you - because you are young and strong and beautiful - because you are wild and sweet and - fragrant, and - elusive, like the wild flowers you love. Because you are so truly an artist in your special way, seeing beauty and giving it to others. I love you because of all of this, because you are rational and highminded and capable of friendship - and in spite of your cooking!"
"But - how do you want to live?"
"As we did here - at first," he said. "There was peace, exquisite silence. There was beauty - nothing but beauty. There were the clean wood odors and flowers and fragrances and sweet wild wind. And there was you - your fair self, always delicately dressed, with white firm fingers sure of touch in delicate true work. I loved you then. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Success has a lot of things that go along with it and I haven't experienced any personal resentment. I can't control any of that and I try not to worry about it. I hope that's not the case, you know. Most of the writers that I know and artists that I know understand what was going on. I think there's just as many things going on in the awards process that have to do with the show having won a few times. — Matthew Weiner

I wish I had the talent to paint the way I feel about you, for my words always feel inadequate. I imagine using red for your passion and pale blue for your kindness; forest green to reflect the depth of your empathy and bright yellow for your unflagging optimism. And still I wonder: can even an artist's palette capture the full range of what you mean to me? — Nicholas Sparks

Do you want to be an artist so that the whole world will look at you, or do you want to be an artist because you would like to use your ability to attract attention, to have the world see itself through you differently? — Anna Deavere Smith

Some artists are told what to like and told definitions of what the music business is. That's a problem. Music is artistry, and you want your music heard, your act known. But artists don't know. They are ignorant the minute they sign a contract. — Chuck D

Look it - you start out as an artist, I started out when I was nineteen, and you're full of defenses. You have all of this stuff to prove. You have all of these shields in front of you. All your weapons are out. It's like you're going into battle. You can accomplish a certain amount that way. But then you get to a point where you say, "But there's this whole other territory I'm leaving out." And that territory becomes more important as you grow older. You begin to see that you leave out so much when you go to battle with the shield and all the rest of it. You have to start including that other side or die a horrible death as an artist with your shield stuck on the front of your face forever. You can't grow that way. And I don't think you can grow as a person that way, either. There just comes a point when you have to relinquish some of that and risk becoming more open to the vulnerable side, which I think is the female side. It's much more courageous than the male side. — Sam Shepard

Is, er, your friend a member of college staff?"
"No, Al's an artist. And, ah, he's my partner," Larry said. I like it when he calls me that.
I don't think Matthew's mum liked it. "How ... lovely. Is that how you met? Through ... art?"
Larry said "Yes" just as I said, "No, we met when I was having a piss in an alley. — J.L. Merrow

When you know who you are as an artist and you have your own identity and got it figured out it helps you know what to write about. — Keifer Thompson

As an artist you have to find something that deeply interests you. It's not enough to make art that is about art, to look at Matisse and Picasso and say, how can I paint like them? You have to be obsessed by something that can't come out in any other way, then the other things - the skill and technique - will follow. — Anselm Kiefer

The more hedonistic you were, the better ... I very much subscribed to that as a young artist. — Rufus Wainwright

A very tall bearded guy was standing in a doorway, smoking a cigarette. "Hey", he said.
"Hi," I said. "Excuse me, do you rehearse here?"
"Yeah," he said, extending his hand and saying, almost formally, "Gibby Haynes. I'm in the Butthole Surfers."
I shook his hand. "Moby," I said. "I just moved upstairs."
"Are you an artist?"
"No, a musician."
"Oh, cool. Welcome to the building."
"Do you know who else has spaces here?" I asked.
"Well, there's us and Iggy and Sonic Youth and Helmet and Sean Lennon and the Beastie Boys and some other people," he said as someone behind him started making a wall of feedback. — Moby

Where do we get the notion that our idea of success and God's are the same? You have written a book; you are a clever manager and promoter; you are a talented artist; you are independently wealthy; you have achieved fame and fortune. Without the gifts of intelligence, imagination, personality, and physical energy - which are all endowed by God - where would you be? — Billy Graham

To A Young Beauty
Dear fellow-artist, why so free
With every sort of company,
With every Jack and Jill?
Choose your companions from the best;
Who draws a bucket with the rest
Soon topples down the hill.
You may, that mirror for a school,
Be passionate, not bountiful
As common beauties may,
Who were not born to keep in trim
With old Ezekiel's cherubim
But those of Beauvarlet.
I know what wages beauty gives,
How hard a life her servant lives,
Yet praise the winters gone:
There is not a fool can call me friend,
And I may dine at journey's end
With Landor and with Donne. — W.B.Yeats

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

I am a famous artist. I make millions. But I frequently see debut shows of unknown artists with prices that are double of mine ... what they're really doing is barely getting by and helping me sell 1,000 paintings a year effortlessly, because they make my paintings look like such a bargain. Thank you to all the egotistical art students! — Mark Kostabi

Well, you know, people don't know me as a country artist and I am new to the genre. But that's how I grew up singing. — Kristin Chenoweth

When you see a fish you don't think of its scales, do you? You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water. Well, I've tried to express just that. If I made fins and eyes and scales, I would arrest its movement, give a pattern or shape of reality. I want just the flash of its spirits. — Constantin Brancusi

Never trust the occultist who tells you that he is the head of a tradition, because if he were, in the first place, he would not tell the fact to the uninitiated, and in the second place he would in all probability be living in great seclusion and inaccessible to all but his immediate subordinates. If a man is a great artist he does not need to inform us of the fact; we shall know him by his pictures that are hung in the galleries of the nation, and we shall, moreover, find that he guards himself from casual acquaintances because of the inroads on his time to which his fame renders him liable. The more eminent a person, the harder he is to approach, not out of any spirit of pride and exclusiveness, but because so many people want to see him that discrimination has to be used in admitting them. — Dion Fortune

A man is born an artist as a hippopotamus is born a hippopotamus; and you can no more make yourself one than you can make yourself a giraffe. — Alain De Botton

Nobody has a perfect life. What you see on the screen is the best of the artist. — Rene Angelil

I only know this - that you can't give advice to an artist. — Louise Berliawsky Nevelson

An artist reveals his naked soul in his work - and so, gentle reader, do you when you respond to it. — Ayn Rand

'Biutiful' is a tough film. It doesn't make concessions to the vulgarity of light entertainment. It's not the kind of film that you see every day in the Cineplex. But as an artist, it's the thing that I needed to do. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

If you're any kind of artist, you make a miraculous journey, and you come back and make some statements in shapes and colors of where you were. — Romare Bearden

I do think there's a difference when you see a book where you can tell the creator's doing something they really love or are really passionate about as opposed to an artist or a writer who is just doing a particular job or trying to sell a product or trying to cash in on a popular trend. — Mike Mignola

As an independent artist, you're always figuring out how you're going to fund your next album. — Tess Henley

This is business: they don't care about your lyrics;
The better you sell, the better future for their children.
Controversy sells, so they support conflict,
Makes more progress, means more profit.
An artist gets killed, they say they're 'so sorry,'
Meanwhile, they tell you the date of his next project.
What a life ... death made them more profit:
Record companies get paid for your drama. — Cormega

With Martha Stewart, the power of the brand, the power of television, taught me that if you can marry all those ingredients - like you marry a great song with a great artist - and get the right television exposure, then you've got something that really is going to be sustainable. You can expand and blow up. — Charles Koppelman

And the part about being a professional artist is that you can tell and you can do it over again, even if you can't say how you got there exactly. — Bruce Nauman

What's exciting about being an artist, still, and what I'm really finding is awesome is that you can do it until you drop. I don't care how many lines I have on my face - I'll keep doing it! — Nikki Sixx

Of course, growing up, I was a big fan of rap so that was something that I got into. I was a fan of a lot of artists. You can be a fan, but at the same time, you gotta carve your own swagger and carve out your own style. — Kirko Bangz

Every day is a writing day. I get to my desk between 8 and 8:30 in the morning and then work through until 6pm, and then normally I'll take up whatever will be happening in the evening, usually painting or photography.
I do about four drafts total. I do handwritten drafts because I don't type and I have no wish to type. I mean, I know how to type, but I have no interest in putting the words down that way.
Maybe that's because I'm an artist and because I've always used a pen and so there's a sort of natural feel to it.
I don't know how familiar you are with Blake's illuminated texts, but you know very often he'll literally make words flower. It's really this glorious thing in bringing words and pictures into the same place, the same space. — Clive Barker

*on saying I Love You* When you hear those words, it's like being picked out from the crowd. — Philip Siegel

What makes someone an artist? I don't think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artist who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances. — Seth Godin

You never know what an artist is going to create next. — Kesha

There are so many rules in the art world. I don't like rules and I break them all the time. I don't care if people think I'm overexposed. What I care about is if I'm going to run out of energy. Overexposure is only a problem if you are drained of energy and cannot come up with new ideas. Every artist has to recognize that and know when to stop for a moment. — Marina Abramovic

If you go to a master to study and learn the techniques, you diligently follow all the instructions the master puts upon you. But then comes the time for using the rules in your own way and not being bound by them ... You can actually forget the rules because they have been assimilated. You are an artist. Your own innocence now is of one who has become an artist, who has been, as it were, transmuted ... You can't have creativity unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all the rules. — Joseph Campbell

You witness the artists acting as witnesses, but they provide a point of view that's less monolithic. It's less official in a certain way. Many artists are speaking in the first person singular, as a reaction to dubbed-over media commentary. The thought is: "Enough with how we're represented by the media. Let me tell the story." — Massimiliano Gioni

Pegi just recorded "I Don't Want to Talk About," written by Danny Whitten, the original Crazy Horse guitar player and singer who's all over Early Daze, an album of songs from the beginning of Crazy Horse that I have been working on compiling recently. Danny was every bit the artist I am, but he died of a heroin OD in the early seventies. Every time I hear Pegi sing that song, it makes me tremendously sad. She sings it so beautifully, phrasing it to break my heart. She does it justice. You can see I have some unfinished business with Danny. — Neil Young

For me the journey of making a film is a journey of discovery as to what that film is. I mean what I do is what other artists do, painters, novelists, people that make music, poets, sculptors, you name it. It's about starting out and working with the material and discovering through making, working with the material the artifact. — Mike Leigh

Can you understand,' asked my father, 'the deep meaning of that weakness, that passion for colored tissue, for papier-mache, for distemper, for oakum and sawdust? This is,' he continued with a pained smile, 'the proof of our love for matter as such, for its fluffiness or porosity, for its unique mystical consistency. Demiurge, that great master and artist, made matter invisible, made it disappear under the surface of life. We, on the contrary, love its creaking, its resistance, its clumsiness. We like to see behind each gesture, behind each move, its inertia, its heavy effort, its bearlike awkwardness. — Bruno Schulz

If people like you, they will like your magic. If you are an artist at what you do, they will sing your praises and applaud your artistry. — Paul LePaul

The Majesty guitar symbolizes the very reason why I am so proud to be a Music Man artist. I had the idea for this guitar a couple of years ago but it is because of their innovative spirit and dedication to the art of guitar building that it is now a reality. I am so grateful that I am able to collaborate with the best guitar company on the planet and so incredibly proud that together we have created what is to me, the perfect musical instrument for guitar players. I really hope you get a chance to play one and am confident that you will feel the same! — John Petrucci

It was supposed to say "Great Artist" on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say "such a good teacher/daughter/friend" instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is F*** YOU ALL. — Claire Messud

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. — Sean Paul

If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud. — Emile Zola

At Cornell, my acting teacher said you cannot be religious and be an artist. I sort of got it, because faith is a comfort and art comes from a lot of places, in a lot of people, from the dark chasm. — Catherine Hicks