Nina Simone
Singer, Songwriter, Pianist
"You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times."
Artist quotes
Artist
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Oscar Wilde
Writer
"The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me."
Claude Monet
Painter
"It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly."
Meek Mill
Rapper
"I work hard. I focus on myself and putting food on my dinner table before anything else. I don't worry about other artists. Worrying about the next person in a negative way is the wrong way to be."
Langston Hughes
Poet, Novelist
"An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose."
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"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."
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"I want the unobtainable. Other artists paint a bridge, a house, a boat, and that's the end. They are finished. I want to paint the air which surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat, the beauty of the air in which these objects are located, and that is nothing short of impossible."
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"No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other."
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"All artists are constantly looking for something and they don't always know what."
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"Your soul is a seeker, lover and artist; shape-shifting through archetypal energy, between your darkness and fields of light, your body and spirit, your heaven and hell, until you land in the moment of sweet surrender; when you, as a dancer, disappear into the dance."
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"I've always been interested in history, but they never taught Negro history in the public schools...I don't see how a history of the United States can be written honestly without including the Negro. I didn't [paint] just as a historical thing, but because I believe these things tie up with the Negro today. We don't have a physical slavery, but an economic slavery. If these people, who were so much worse off than the people today, could conquer their slavery, we can certainly do the same thing....I am not a politician. I'm an artist, just trying to do my part to bring this thing about."
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"An artist is someone who has learned to trust in himself."
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"A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others."
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"If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist. If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician. If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor. But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death; and he sent us a Savior."
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"Any artist that's as serious about making music as I am, I'm cool with that. But if you tellin' me, "Man, send me a verse and I'ma send you a verse." No. That's not collaborating. We don't know each other and I'm serous about this music."
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"Be your own artist, and always be confident in what youre doing. If youre not going to be confident, you might as well not be doing it."
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"The question is very understandable, but no one has found a satisfactory answer to it so far. Yes, why do they make still more gigantic planes, still heavier bombs and, at the same time, prefabricated houses for reconstruction? Why should millions be spent daily on the war and yet there's not a penny available for medical services, artists, or for poor people? Why do some people have to starve, while there are surpluses rotting in other parts of the world? Oh, why are people so crazy?"
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"She was a sweet girl but not really pretty, a rough sketch of a woman with a little of everything in her, one of those silhouettes which artists draw in three strokes on the tablecloth in a café after dinner, between a glass of brandy and a cigarette. Nature sometimes turns out creatures like that."
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"In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent."
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"You bring to a painting your own experience."
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"Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time."
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"There are only two types of women - goddesses and doormats."
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"You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist. You can make the work a chore, or you can have a good time. You can do it the way you used to clear the dinner dishes when you were thirteen, or you can do it as a Japanese person would perform a tea ceremony, with a level of concentration and care in which you can lose yourself, and so in which you can find yourself."
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"My painting is visible images which conceal nothing... they evoke mystery and indeed when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question 'What does that mean'? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable."
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"All true artists, bear within themselves a deeply rooted and often unconscious desire for transformation."
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