Artists Who Quotes & Sayings

When Margot died after a car accident in which my sister was also seriously injured in November 1970, I sat on a hill behind a friend's house in Greymouth trying to get my head around having to identify the body of my university sweetheart. Yvonne was the only one who came with condolences (Paul Caffyn) — Theresa Sjoquist

common sense observations of human behavior support a similar dissociation in reasoning abilities which cuts in both directions. We all know persons who are exceedingly clever in their social navigation, who have an unerring sense of how to seek advantage for themselves and for their group, but who can be remarkably inept when trusted with a nonpersonal, nonsocial problem. The reverse condition is just as dramatic: We all know creative scientists and artists whose social sense is a disgrace, and who regularly harm themselves and others with their behavior. The absent-minded professor is the benign variety of the latter type. At work, in these different personality styles, are the presence or absence of what Howard Gardner has called "social intelligence," or the presence or absence of one or the other of his multiple intelligences such as the "mathematical. — Antonio R. Damasio

Thievery is a time-honored profession, my girl. Not to be confused with these hooligans who mug people on the street, or bloodthirsty klutzes who burst into banks, guns blazing. We're discriminating. We're romantic." His voice rose in passion. "We're artists — Nora Roberts

Scenius." Under this model, great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative individuals - artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers - who make up an "ecology of talent. — Austin Kleon

I tried to just do things like make some money, be responsible, help out other artists who I see have had a similar path. — Ariel Pink

Our users are trapeze artists, high school football coaches - I got cornered by a couple of theoretical physicists who said Dropbox lets them collaborate across the world and share their experiments' results. They were raving about how it's driving their research. — Drew Houston

Every man who is any kind of artist has a great deal of female in him. I act and give of myself as a man, but I register and receive with the soul of a woman. The only really good artists are feminine. I can't admit the existence of an artist whose dominant personality is masculine. — Orson Welles

Who is willing to be satisfied with a job that expresses all his limitations? He will accept such work only as a 'means of livelihood' while he waits to discover his 'true vocation'. The world is full of unsuccessful businessmen who still secretly believe they were meant to be artists or writers or actors in the movies. — Thomas Merton

But in the old days, visual artists used to fall into two distinct categories: those of us who created images with cameras and those of us who applied stuff onto other stuff, with brushes or other tools. — Buffy Sainte-Marie

Words are one of the most powerful things given to human beings. In the hands of artists who can use them properly they are like weapons of mass construction. — Eric T. Benoit

I believe your success is based off what your goals are. Are you trying to feed your family or have plaques on the wall and be broke? In that case, I think the game is in a better place. We have all heard of famous artists who are broke. Then we know of artists who may have had only a song or two on radio, but have a million or two dollars off that quick come up. — Yo Gotti

It was this feeling for a lot of my characters, who are dissidents or banned artists and writers, that they had had to fight living under so much surveillance, and then suddenly they come to America and they're like, I'm not being surveilled - I'm not even being noticed at all. — Molly Antopol

It is dangerous it seems to me for a civilization when there is a complete abyss betewen people in general and the artists. Or is it always so? The poets who are most ardently on the people's side write in such a way that the people cannot see rhyme nor reason to their work. — May Sarton

I love artists who have spirituality. Jonathan Coulton is the man, I love his melodies and lyrics. Chap-hop is the bomb! — MC Lars

The true artists is one who insists on producing a supply, whether or not there's any demand. — Ashleigh Brilliant

Emma, you and your poetry, me and my acting--what are we trying to do? We can't top this city. We poor would-be artists can't compete with or improve on the rich density of human experience on any random, average, slow summer night in New York--who are we trying to kid? In the overheard conversation in the elevator, in the five minutes of talk the panhandler gives you before hitting you for the handout, in the brief give-and-take when you are going out and the cleaning lady is coming in--there are the real stories, incredible, heartbreaking and ridiculous, there are the command performances, the Great American Novels but forever unwritten, untoppable, and so beautifully unaware. — Wilton Barnhardt

Are you familiar with the word inspiration? The meaning of it? Where it comes from?...In the Dark Ages no understood the things that made some people special. Every soul in that dark, difficult time faced the same limitations, every soul except a precious few who saw things differently, the poets, inventors, artists, stone masons. Regular folks didn't understand how a person could wake up one day and see the world differently. They thought it was a gift from God. Thus the word "inspiration." It means breathed upon...breathed upon by God himself. — John Hart

When I was a kid, I wanted to emulate Mel Blanc, who is arguably one of the most legendary voiceover recording artists of our time. I used to watch all the cartoons where he would voice Daffy, Elmer Fudd and Porky the Pig. I knew one day I wanted to do that. — Jesse McCartney

There is something abominable about cameras, because they possess the power to invent many worlds. As an artist who has been lost in this wilderness of mechanical reproduction for many years, I do not know which world to start with. I have seen fellow artists driven to the point of frenzy by photography. — Robert Smithson

People writing about me have said that I've influenced a lot of people, and there are some artists who have credited me with influencing them. — Harvey Pekar

If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this. — James Whistler

[The people who run things] are so successful in the way they do it now. They could buy me off with a couple of vintage prints, they could have you do an ad, or give you a ribbon ... In capitalist countries they reward artists because we're ineffectual. — Danny Lyon

Soul music has so many great artists who put their thing down. That's important. — Raekwon

Many artists who sign deals in the US and UK get the benefit of worldwide promotion and have a better shot at breaking globally. — Wendy Starland

I think sometimes comedians and entertainers and artists, sometimes they get onstage, and it's all for what they want to do. I think you still need to do stuff for the audience. They're the ones who are making it possible. — Frank Caliendo

I'm ... getting there. I'm beginning to think that maybe it's okay to be a blank canvas. Maybe it's okay that my future is unknown. And maybe," I say with another smile, "it's okay to be inspired by the people who do know their future." "It goes both ways, you know." I link his icicle fingers through mine. "What does?" "Artists are inspired by blank canvases." My smile grows wider. — Stephanie Perkins

Cultures cherish artists because they are people who can say, Look at that. — Marilynne Robinson

The God who impoverished himself is also the God of abundance, and somehow, perhaps at times nonsensically, Christians are called to live out of an ethic not of scarcity but of abundance - an abundance that extends both to the homeless neighbor and to the artist neighbor. . . — Lauren Winner

James Brown was one of the first artists who found four bars that he liked and played them the entire way through, and then he just added to it vocally. — Brian Austin Green

You know how it is to want something. Desire builds like a little house in your head and it sits there, half-constructed in your mind. Women who want children are this way. Artists are this way about pictures. It doesn't go away. You may forget for a few months but then it's back, the unfinished pieces of what you want. — Deb Olin Unferth

We all exist in similar systems that mirror and reproduce the same American culture for the most part. What Oscar Wilde said about the lucky author who has a non-literary day job no longer holds, if it ever did. Artists seek validation as much as they seek money. The creation and invention of culture and canon is where most of the trouble lies. — Fady Joudah

Many of the artists who have represented Negro life have seen only the comic, ludicrous side of it, and have lacked sympathy with and appreciation for the warm big heart that dwells within such a rough exterior. — Henry Ossawa Tanner

Those who accuse these women of fraud in their image craft seem not to have heard of David Bowie's successful alter ego Ziggy Stardust or even Bob Dylan, the folksy creation of a genius named Robert Allen Zimmerman. There is a tradition of male artists taking on personae that are understood to be part of their art. It is as though there is so much genius within them that it must be split between these mortal men and the characters they create. Women who venture to do the same are ridiculed as fakers and try-hards. — Alana Massey

I would imagine, a very large percentage of people who get something for art and they do something else, and they have some excess resources. And they trade those resources with artists whose work makes them feel good, or feel better, or question. And the artist, if they're smart, they use it to buy the most expensive thing in the world: time to make more. The more that come, the better it is for these people, their children, the people they care about, fills the society with a real constant thing. — Lawrence Weiner

Writers and people who had command of words were respected and feared as people who manipulated magic. In latter times I think that artists and writers have allowed themselves to be sold down the river. They have accepted the prevailing belief that art and writing are merely forms of entertainment. They're not seen as transformative forces that can change a human being; that can change a society. They are seen as simple entertainment; things with which we can fill 20 minutes, half an hour, while we're waiting to die. — Alan Moore

This is the same establishment that all those who want, or rather aspire to, to be literary figures of the century, artists, painters and sculptors want acceptance from and approval. They want to be looked up to. Young and upcoming poets must approach their craft with an almost angelic perspective. So many writers are missing a condensed fusion in their writing, they condescend to their audience, the truth is not spoken in their work, they gabble, their words seem to make a hot fuss on the page. What do they gain? They gain this, simply nothing. Poets must assemble and present their work accordingly to how they see fit and should be careful of advice from other writers and editors. Sometimes there can be too much going on in the words that are meant to be given with the best of intentions. — Abigail George

The minority who actually loves its work seems to be made up chiefly of the writers, dancers, actors and other artists, most scientists above the technician-troll level, computer freaks, and the righteous dope-dealers of California. — Robert Anton Wilson

Our universe cannot even be stated symbolically. And this touches us all more directly than one might suppose. For example, artists, who have been very little influenced by social systems, have always responded instinctively to latent assumptions about the shape of the universe. The incomprehensibility of our new cosmos seems to me, ultimately, to be the reason for the chaos of modern art. — Kenneth Clark

A lot of artists are used to their music being reused online and have come to accept and embrace it. You have a generation who go on YouTube and remake and remix music online all the time. They remake and upload songs and videos, and then other people remake the remakes; it just keeps going. — Girl Talk

There are a lot of people, especially the younger generation who don't feel that they need to support the artists by buying their music because they grew up learning that record companies are evil. — Bob Mould

Proficiency in art is a contract with your self and the empowerment of your self. Not all of us demand or even desire proficiency, but for those who do it's necessary to temper the influence of groups. And while some artists think history is bunk, the historical evidence is overwhelming: "In my isolation I grow stronger." — Paul Gauguin

I didn't think much about foreign readers when I began 'Naruto,' but I knew that many of the artists who influenced me had already been accepted overseas. — Masashi Kishimoto

I love Ruth Brown, not just her singing, but Ruth Brown has more girl power than anyone, because she fought hard against people who ripped her off and then helped other artists through the Rhythm and Blues Foundation. — Ronnie Spector

I remember being influenced by great artists when I was a kid - not to call myself a great artist - but people who I thought were great enough that they really made a difference. And so I would never want to be disappointed by them, and I want to make sure I never disappoint audience. — Sarah Jones

My favorite artists from comics were early ones like Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko who had a real heavy ink style. Captain America, co created by Jack Kirby, was a favorite of mine and I sometimes use an altered version of his costume on some of my characters. — Marcel Dzama

The view of life adopted by these people, my literary associates, was that generally speaking life is a process of development in the course of which the most important role is played by us, the thinkers; and that among the thinkers it is we, the artists and poets, who have the most influence. Our vocation is to educate people. In order to avoid being confronted by the obvious question - 'What do I know and what have I got to teach? — Leo Tolstoy

People who are artists, they want their music, their art, their acting craft to get out. And once it's appreciated, that seems to be, unfortunately, enough. But you got to take care of your business, surround yourself with good counsel, and that didn't happen. — Michael Wright

Well, I think there are artists who are more or less contemporary with Hopper who are more relevant. — Donald Judd

She has her own glamour, Willy lad. All poets do, all the bards and artists, all the musicians who truly take the music into their own hearts. They all straddle the border of Faerie, and they see into both worlds. Not dependably into either, perhaps, but that uncertainty keeps them honest and at a distance. — Emma Bull

I have a lot of projects I get asked for, but the opera house really is my house - my home. It's where I feel comfortable and confident and I get to explore these big human stories and dramas and collaborate with extraordinary people, great talented artists and administrators and other people who are passionate about it and support it. It's like working with a great big family - the family you love and enjoy being with all the time. — Jake Heggie

I know there are a lot of musicians and a lot of artists, and there are a lot of writers and other people who inspire young people, but I'd like to see somebody in political life be able to connect and make these choices that we need to make in Washington real in terms of people's lives. — John F. Kerry

The artists who have inspired me the most in my life are the ones who have really had something to say and stand up for. That, to me, is part of being an artist-having the voice to express things that need to be verbalized and brought to light. Unfortunately, I don't think that's a priority for people, because the few artists who do have the nerve to take a stand for what they believe get shut down in a way. — Alicia Keys

I often envy my friends who are visual artists. Visual artists have other things to work with. Other media. I envy my sculptor friends: they have hunks of matter. Marble. Wood. It's physical, which I find very appealing. What we have is nothing, is just glaringly blank. — Dani Shapiro

When I went to Pixar, I became aware of a great divide. Tech companies don't understand creativity. They don't appreciate intuitive thinking, like the ability of an A&R guy at a music label to listen to a hundred artists and have a feel for which five might be successful. And they think that creative people just sit around on couches all day and are undisciplined, because they've not seen how driven and disciplined the creative folks at places like Pixar are. On the other hand, music companies are completely clueless about technology. They think they can just go out and hire a few tech folks. But that would be like Apple trying to hire people to produce music. We'd get second-rate A&R people, just like the music companies ended up with second-rate tech people. I'm one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline. — Walter Isaacson

Harry had loved most of the arts long enough to know that artists had to be excused failings which would condemn the general population. The artist was the proxy, the brave one, the one who spoke, was thanked, and who paid the price. Artists were allowed, indeed encouraged, to lead more libidinous lives on behalf of others who had, of necessity, to leave their jouissance, at the door while they worked. — Hanif Kureishi

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

Artists who believe they control everything control what they know. Artists who allow outside forces to intervene are like canoes going down rapids. The rocks are there. If you fight them, you fly off the bow. If you allow the current to take you, you can pass through swimmingly. It is a rare gift at every bend. — Arno Hintjens

We live by revelations, as Christians, as artists, which means we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget all the questions and we become like the pharisee who listed all his considerable virtues, and thanked God that he was not like other men. — Madeleine L'Engle

The artist is the lowest form of life on the rung of the ladder. The publishers are usually businessmen who deal with businessmen. They deal with promotional people. They deal with financial people. They deal with accountants. They deal with people who work on higher levels. They deal with tax people, but have absolutely no interest in artists, in individual artists, especially very young artists. — Jack Kirby

It's something I've always loved doing. I'm not one of the artists who comes in and just does my bit. I'm there every second of every day. That's my hands-on situation. — Keith Urban

The view of life of these people, my comrades in authorship, consisted in this: that life in general goes on developing, and in this development we - men of thought - have the chief part; and among men of thought it is we - artists and poets - who have the greatest influence. Our vocation is to teach mankind. — Leo Tolstoy

The time has come for writers, especially those who are artists, to admit that in this world one cannot make anything out, just as Socrates once admitted it, just as Voltaire admitted it. — Anton Chekhov

I think I misunderstood Instagram and just thought it was people photographing their friends, and discovered there were a number of people, a number of artists, who were taking it very seriously and doing very imaginative work with Instagram as the medium. — Stephen Shore

If all I hired were cake decorators, our cakes would just look like cakes that people decorate. We do astounding work at Charm City Cakes and to do that you need people who think in astounding ways. Artists just think in different ways. — Duff Goldman

I think it would be bad for culture and the art if artists and people who develop the apparatus to support those artists don't get paid. — Lyor Cohen

I hate artists who are not of their time. — Guillaume Apollinaire

The Tonys are the once-a-year shot for all of these shows and artists who work so diligently every single performance but only for a thousand or so people at a time. This gives them the opportunity to perform to millions of people. — Neil Patrick Harris

Their [artists'] essential effort is to catapult themselves wholly, without holding back one bit, into a course of action without having any idea where they will end up. They are like riders who gallop into the night, eagerly leaning on their horse's neck, peering into a blinding rain. And they have to do it over and over again. — Anne Truitt

I have a feeling a lot of artists' work got lost [because of AIDS]. Howard was fortunate because his family and friends supported him, but a chilling thing I remember was these guys at St. Vincent's [Hospital] who would call out for someone to listen to them, just for a moment. They were dying alone. Who knows what happened to their work? It's been a process to follow the thread to find out everything Howard did. It's getting over that shock. — Aaron Brookner

There are two kinds of artists left: those who endorse Pepsi and those who simply won't. — Annie Lennox

The artists who endure are the ones who stay focused even after they have reached the top of their profession. — Simon Cowell

I'm not one of those playwrights who says, 'Show up, hit your marks, and don't talk to me!' I always want to hear from the other artists involved, whether it's the director, the lighting tech, or the actors. — Pearl Cleage

The air of Paris is quite different from any other. There's something about it which thrills and excites and intoxicates you, and in some strange way makes you want to dance and do all sorts of other silly things. As soon as I get out of the train, it's just as if I had drunk a bottle of champagne. What a time one could have surrounded by artists! How happy those lucky people must be, the great men who have made a name in a city like Paris! What a wonderful life they have! — Guy De Maupassant

One mentions many artists who are actually art works of nature. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

What then is to be the lot of Rossetti's fame and influence? 'An amateur who failed in two arts', it is true; yet it hardly harms Rossetti or touches his standing. On the contrary, it defines both very brilliantly. The small word 'failed' is a small word and little more to artists who are forever going on until they give up over a game that must be lost. Every artist, when confronted by the immensities of art, which is life, must confess to failure. A failure is a thing very relative. — Ford Madox Ford

The invitation for artists to compete to see who can be the most charitable is a wonderful thing. — Bruce Cockburn

There are female artists I can look at that I find more in common with than the male artists, because they're blending the pop, dance and theatricality ... but currently there aren't a lot of guys who go there. — Adam Lambert

I like adding little elements into the final mix. I'm more fond of the '70s glam than '80s. I have that style of vocals ... there are a lot of pop artists who are using the glam vibe in their music. I'm part of that wave. — Adam Lambert

And I hate to see artists who are real safe. I love to see artists swing for the fences sometimes. — Lee Ann Womack

We sleepwalkers of the day! We artists! We who conceal naturalness! We who are moon- and God-struck! We untiring wanderers, silent as death, on heights that we see not as heights but as our plains, as our safety. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I think the thing about what I want to achieve for the label is it to really be a home for artists who are already developed, who already have a great sense of their artistry or their imaging, who don't really feel or want that marketing push. — Solange Knowles

It always makes me sad when I think of how I saw Wagner wasting his vitality, not only by singing their parts to some of his artists, but acting out the smallest details, and of how few they were who were responsive to his wishes. — Anton Seidl

Eden Robinson is one of those rare artists who comes to writing with a skill and maturity that has taken the rest of us decades to achieve. — Thomas King

Many high-functioning multiples are gifted writers and artists, who, as they heal, are able to find an aesthetic outlet for the sealed-off rage and pain they have not allowed themselves to feel. — Marlene Steinberg

The music business is a place where the artists are all treated like we're working for the people who are working for us. That can obviously be exaggerated when you're a female. — Sinead O'Connor

We, as artists, we have the right to express ourselves. That is our first amendment, freedom of speech. But I also believe that we have an obligation to the youth to be somewhat responsible in what we say on records. But I think that comes with age. I think that comes with artists growing up and becoming assured of who they are as people. — Ja Rule

I do believe everyone on this earth is an artist - some people more than others. But I do believe we are all artists in a certain way. We all have unique abilities. There are people who are meant to make it their life, and that is a different kind of person who would choose to be on that path. — Melora Hardin

We are probably the only artists in the world who have a 2,000-page book on a work of art that doesn't exist. But in this way, these projects reveal their identity through this whole process. When I'm starting, I only have the slightest idea of how the work of art will exist. — Christo

I sometimes look at the careers of other ... I guess I could call them contemporaries or maybe close artists; you know, the 4 or 5 guys who go to New York City and get a loft and work together and use each other as models and that sort of thing and wait for years and years to get married. Maybe I just wasn't that definite. — Mike Royer

Non illegitimi te carborundum, the graffiti in prisoner-of-war camps is said to have run. The rough translation, very important for artists, is "Don't let the bastards get you down." Artists who take this to heart survive and often prevail. The key here is action. Pain that is not used profitably quickly solidifies into a leaden heart, which makes any action difficult. — Julia Cameron

I'm always in awe of people who are artists in their fields - people who understand that simply by taking ideas and translating them into reality, they've created value in the world. — Kevin Systrom

Month after month, Wizard Academy equips people who want to make a difference. This is why journalists and scientists and artists and educators and business owners and advertising professionals and ministers are attracted to our little school. — Roy H. Williams

There are so many great artists, I think, who kind of suffer from being icons, legends, acknowledged masters. — Richard Linklater

It isn't that I dislike artists, but I can't stand anyone who puts on those ponderous airs of a man of character. — Osamu Dazai

...While many who have debated the image of female sexuality have put "explicit" and "self-objectifying" on one side and "respectable" and "covered-up" on the other, I find this a flawed means of categorization. [...] There is a creative possibility for liberatory explicitness because it may expand the confines of what women are allowed to say and do. We just need to refer to the history of blues music - one full of raunchy, irreverent, and transgressive women artists - for examples. Yet the overwhelming prevalence of the Madonna/whore dichotomy in American culture means that any woman who uses explicit language or images in her creative expression is in danger of being symbolically cast into the role of whore regardless of what liberatory intentions she may have. — Imani Perry

Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman. — Guillaume Apollinaire

Snow-melt in the stream: Mama Nature turning winter's storms into nourishment for the soil, fecundity, and beauty. This is what I must now learn to do with the stormy weather I've been passing through: turn it into beauty, turn it into art, so new life can germinate and bloom.
One example of a creative artist who does this is my friend Jane Yolen, who wrote her exquisite book of poems The Radiation Sonnets while her husband was undergoing treatment for the cancer that would eventually claim his life. This is what all artists must do: take whatever life gives us and "alchemize" it into our art (either directly and autobiographically, as in Jane's book, or indirectly; whatever approach works best), turning darkness into light, spinning straw into gold, transforming pain and hardship into what J.R.R. Tolkien called 'a miraculous grace. — Terri Windling

Diversity matters. Not only in what we look like, or what religion we practice, or in whom we love, but also in how we live our lives, including the order in which we go about things, the seasons in which we are able to create art. Those who are engaged in the arts should be the last to send any other message, because when artists endorse the traditional order of a society, it suggests that they have forgotten their own true role within it. — Robin Black

I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits. — Howard Hodgkin

Today, indeed, you can find urban white artists - people who could not reliably tell a coyote from a german shepherd at a hundred feet - casually incorporating the figure of Coyote the Trickster into their work. A premise common to all such efforts is that power can be borrowed across space and time. It cannot. There's a difference between meaning that is embodied and meaning that is referenced. As someone once said, no one should wear a Greek fisherman's hat except a Greek fisherman. CANON — David Bayles