Artist quotes
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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."
"There are only two types of women - goddesses and doormats."
"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."
"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."
"All true artists, bear within themselves a deeply rooted and often unconscious desire for transformation."
"When we are touched by a song, it is because the artist cannot hide himself."
"I paint flowers so they will not die."
"There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad."
"Out of the closets and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, bookstores, recording studios and film studios of the world. Everything belongs to the inspired and dedicated thief…. Words, colors, light, sounds, stone, wood, bronze belong to the living artist. They belong to anyone who can use them. Loot the Louvre! A bas l’originalité, the sterile and assertive ego that imprisons us as it creates. Vive le vol-pure, shameless, total. We are not responsible. Steal anything in sight."
"I would advise young artists to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly."
"Do not wonder that I am so religious. An artist who is not could not produce anything like this. I like praying there at the window when I look out on the green and at the sky. I study with the birds, flowers, God and myself."
"Every harlot was a virgin once."
"The best job that was ever offered to me was to become a landlord in a brothel. In my opinion it's the perfect milieu for an artist to work in."
"The architect must be a prophet... a prophet in the true sense of the term... if he can't see at least ten years ahead don't call him an architect."
"To be an artist — actually, to be a human being in these times — it’s all difficult. … What matters is to know what you want and pursue it."
"A true artist is an ugly man."
"No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."
"Every positive value has its price in negative terms... the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima."
"The tones of gray, pale turquoise and pink will prevail."
"I'm an artist and that means I can be as egotistical as I want to be."
