Artists Block Quotes & Sayings

Most artists have experienced the creative block. We get stuck in our work. We beat our head against the wall: nothing. Sometimes, it is because we are trying something at the wrong time. — Lukas Foss

The artist treats intuition and nuance with respect and reminds us that a little madness resides in all of us. Artists give voice to feelings, to conflict, to the prism of human experience. — Peter Block

Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter. — Samuel Johnson

At my second record label, they told me and other female artists that some of us were going on the chopping block. I was 19 ... and it was devastating. — Katy Perry

We have banished our artists to the fringe of society and tell them to eat cake. It is our artists who choose freedom over safety and use their talents to question and confront the culture. — Peter Block

My manager lives on my block; four of the apartments in my apartment complex of seven are people I know. It's a really close-knit community, and almost everyone on these few blocks are artists or graphic designers, because we live right on the cusp of a warehouse district. — Grimes

Does anyone ask a painter
even the painter himself
why he paints? Now me, I painted ... used to ... whatever I saw that was beautiful. It had to be beautiful to me, through and through, before I would paint it. And I used to be a pretty simple fellow, and found many completely beautiful things to paint.
But the older you get the fewer completely beautiful things you see. Every flower has a brown spot somewhere, and a hippogriff has evil laughter. So at some point in his development an artist has to paint, not what he sees (which is what I've always done) but the beauty in what he sees. Most painters, I think, cross this line early; I'm crossing it late.
("To Here and the Easel", 1954) — Theodore Sturgeon

God gave me the stubbornness of a mule and a fairly keen scent. — Albert Einstein

Now, you might think that because there are more poets than ever, there might be more opportunities for poets than ever. And you'd be correct. If your fondest wish is to become the next totally obscure minor poet on the block, well, you're probably already successful at that. This literary landscape has proven itself infinitely capable of absorbing countless interchangeable artists, all doing roughly the same thing in relative anonymity: just happily plucking away until death at the grindstone, making no great cultural headway, bouncing poems off their friends and an audience of about 40 people. A totally fine little life for an artist, to be sure. No grand expectations from the world to sit up and listen. One can live out one's days quite satisfied to create something enjoyed by a genial cult. But that's not why any of us are here tonight. We're here to conquer American Poetry and suck it dry of all glory and juice. — Jim Behrle

We [black people] don't respect our elders. Besides artists, we don't respect Frederick Douglass. We don't respect Martin Luther King. You look at every Martin Luther King Boulevard out here, and it's a crack block. That's not because of white people. That's because of black leadership. We just have that problem, and it's something that I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to conquer. — KRS-One

When he looked at me like that I knew I was bound to follow him anywhere. — Christina Lauren

Europe isn't something connected by the Euro. Every little dimension of Europe is so hugely different, and I think America is different in its states as well, so I never really think of things in big blocks, in terms of other artists. — Patrick Wolf

The Bloodsucker Queen has lived for what, a millennium? She can wait on her decaying ass a little while longer. — Heather Heffner

Suiciders are willing to kill innocent life in order to send the projection that this is an impossible mission. — George W. Bush

To get over artist's block, make shitty art. — Dave Horowitz

The world cannot afford to lose the talents of half it's people if we are to solve the many problems that beset us. — Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

I took the LSAT. My score was decent. I had a plan that if my score was really well, then I might of just went to Yale or Harvard ... But it was just mediocre. I can get into law school. — Vinny Guadagnino

The beautiful must be incongruous. — Julien Torma

The life of an artist is like the life of a monk, a lewd monk if you like, very Rabelaisian. It is an ordination. — Marcel Duchamp

We throw at female artists this expectation that their work has to speak to the female experience. And if it doesn't, you're letting the side down. Throwing this stumbling block in the way of female artists is counterintuitive. — Eleanor Catton

The last thing we discover in composing a work is what to put down first. — Blaise Pascal

Mentorship is really important. I really like to talk to people who have been in the music industry much longer than me about artists' block, things I'm struggling with, or the music business. It's really important for artists to have a community. Sometimes you can feel quite isolated. — Bat For Lashes

For Scary Movie 2, we had a due date and had to work fast. And though there's a lot of pressure, as artists, we just block it out. So really, the pressure comes from us. That's how the first movie happened. There was no outside pressure: we wanted to hit the audience hard. — Shawn Wayans

One does not always know how to express the sorrow of the soul. One does not always know how to silence the joy of the heart. — Tariq Ramadan

So long as there are employers who attack social understanding and have wrong ideas of justice and fair play it is not only the right but also the duty of their employees - who are, after all, an integral part of our people - to protect the general interests against the greed and unreason of the individual. For to safeguard the loyalty and confidence of the people is as much in the interests of the nation as to safeguard public health. — Adolf Hitler

I would have all my offensive linemen wrestle if I could. — John Madden