Artist quotes
8.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Not thinking, yet not dreaming. Ready for whatever may come. When the opponent expands, I contract; and when he contracts, I expand. And when there is an opportunity, "I" do not hit, "it" hits all by itself."
"What the artist is always looking for is the mode of existence in which soul and body are one and indivisible: in which the outward is expressive of the inward: in which form reveals."
"The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes."
"K. Dot was a kid who was trying to find himself in music, finding trends, um, bending towards - ready to bend towards what the industry was telling me to do and after you mature at a certain time in your life, you come into your own...your own niche, your own personality, not only as an artist but as a person."
"I had a lot of dates but I decided to stay home and dye my eyebrows."
"Let my enemies devour each other."
"I wrote and produced millions and millions of selling records, so my publishing company alone was worth millions of dollars. I didn't have to work anymore in life because when the rappers started sampling... I'm the most sampled artist in history."
"Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing."
"The poet, the artist, the sleuth, whoever sharpens our perception tends to antisocial; rarely 'well adjusted,' he cannot go along with currents and trends."
"The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh."
"I think that every artist dreams of renewing the forms which came before, but I think very few can be considered to have achieved that. We are all dwarves standing upon the shoulders of the giants who preceded us, and I think we must never forget that. After all, even iconoclasts only exist with respect to that which they destroy."
"I am an artist... I am here to live out loud."
"Isn't life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?"
"No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone."
"In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing."
"I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies."
"A writer needs a pen, an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army."
"The gift of imagination is by no means an exclusive property of the artist; it is a gift we all share; to some degree or other all of us, all of you, are endowed with the powers of fantasy."
"To be quite blunt, I make pictures for money, to pay the rent.There are some great artists in the business. I am not one of them."
"A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants. A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is."
