"Bureaucrats: they are dead at 30 and buried at 60. They are like custard pies; you can't nail them to a wall."
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Artist quotes
Artist
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Artist quotes (page 16 of 431)
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"Glorious bouquets and storms of applause are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys."
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"Really, I do not know whether my paintings are surrealist or not, but I do know that they are the frankest expression of myself."
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"An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging bowl’ to which the gift is drawn."
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"When I was building the Vietnam Memorial, I never once asked the veterans what it was like in the war, because from my point of view, you don't pry into other people's business."
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"I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them."
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"...the right to free expression is something one seizes, not something one is given.... if it does exist, it exists to be used against the established order.... There is absolute opposition between the artist and the state."
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"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."
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"When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend."
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"What surprises me is-even though discrimination against women and racial discrimination still exist, they have improved a lot, especially among artists. And just when I felt I could finally take a break, I encounter the age discrimination. I turned 72 and started noticing a drastic difference in people's attitudes. I started with racism and sexism in the beginning and fought them so hard and was finally ready to relax. Then, here comes ageism, and I feel like, "Give me a break!""
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"I have Dalinian thought: the one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous."
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"Everything is gestation and bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist's life."
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"I love doing logos. I've been a graphic artist all my life."
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"Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world."
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"To be an artist or a writer is to be this weird thing - a hand worker in an era of mass production."
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"With the invention of the blog and all this Internet stuff, everybody has an opinion; everybody has a voice. In fact, there was a time when the average person didn't have a voice so you had to pick an artist to speak for you."
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"So I went out and bought myself a copy of the Writer and Artist Yearbook, bought lots of magazines and got on the phone and talked to editors about ideas for stories. Pretty soon I found myself hired to do interviews and articles and went off and did them."
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"If an artist is reaching for the universe as a source of creative muse, then I'm there. I'm gonna say, "Yeah. Here's Saturn. Here's a black hole. Here's twisted space-time. Talk to me. What do you need? What do you want?" And I'll just feed you, because I think only then does science become mainstream - when science becomes a legitimate topic for artists."
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"Artists are here to disturb the peace."
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"The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see."
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