Artist quotes
8.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"All artists are vain, they long to be recognized and to leave something to posterity. They want to be loved, and at the same time they want to be free. But nobody is free."
"I do support artists standing by their beliefs, and walking with integrity. We have to find a better way to commercially exploit music, while giving artists their proper respect. This cannot be done while taking their contributions for granted, or trying to control the scope of their growth and power through threats and fear tactics."
"That's part of the requirement for me to be an artist is that you're trying to share your personal existence with others and trying to illuminate modern life, trying to understand life."
"Why, I just shake the buildings out of my sleeves."
"I believe totally in a Capitalist System, I only wish that someone would try it."
"I'm a comic book artist. So I think to myself, what do I like to draw? I like to draw hot chicks, fast cars and cool guys in trench coat. So that's what I write about."
"If my artist life didn't work or if I needed to work in some capacity part-time in something, I knew I'd have a real life skill [become a therapist]."
"Please don't make me a joke. End the interview with what I believe. I don't mind making jokes, but I don't want to look like one... I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity..."
"The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him."
"Actually, it's as if [Superman is] more real than we are. We writers come and go, generations of artists leave their interpretations, and yet something persists, something that is always Superman."
"The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things."
"An artist chooses his subjects: that is the way he praises."
"In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very remarkable man."
"The problem of making the inner meet the outer of today is, of course, the function of the artist."
"Poets and artists who speak of the mystery are rare."
"You will never make it. ‘It’ doesn’t exist for an artist."
"A real artist is the one who has learned to recognize and to render... the 'radiance' of all things as an epiphany or showing forth of the truth."
"Some artists want to confront. Some want to invoke thought. They're all necessary and they're all valid."
"I just think that Jack White is the consummate artist - an artist's artist. I'm a huge fan."
"I'm doing what great artists before me did, like Judy Garland, Sammy Davis, Eddie Cantor. I'm doing what they were doing, not at their level yet, but one day I will be. I'm just happy to be in their company."
