Quotes on Artist

I think the line is where you're in the studio, you're creating. That belongs to you as an artist. Nothing should taint that. I shouldn't be thinking about what the fans want, I shouldn't be thinking about what the radio wants, what the label wants, what your manager wants, a song for the chicks, a song for the street.

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

Nothing convinces an artist more of the arbitrariness of the means to which he resorts to attain a goal - however permanent it may be - than the creative process itself, the process of composition.

Failure and its accompanying misery is for the artist his most vital source of creative energy.

Like so many other nerdy, disaffected young people of that time, I dreamed of becoming an 'artist', i.e., somebody whose adult job was original and creative instead of tedious and dronelike.

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

It seems likely that many of the young who don't wait for others to call them artists, but simply announce that they are, don't have the patience to make art.

Artists can no more speak about their work, than plants can speak about horticulture.

Our job as the game creators or developers - the programmers, artists, and whatnot - is that we have to kind of put ourselves in the user's shoes. We try to see what they're seeing, and then make it, and support what we think they might think.

I work as an artist, and I think the audience of one, which is the self, and I have to satisfy myself as an artist. So I always say that I write for the same people that Picasso painted for. I think he painted for himself.

An artist cannot get along without a public; and when the public is absent, what does he do? He invents it, and turning his back on his age, he looks toward the future for what the present denies.

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don't want it.

Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.

Acting, I found, was the biggest charge I ever had. What other artist has it so good? Approval so quick?

An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.

The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal.

I heard someone from the music business saying they are no longer looking for talent, they want people with a certain look and a willingness to cooperate. I thought, that's interesting, because I believe a total unwillingness to cooperate is what is necessary to be an artist — not for perverse reasons, but to protect your vision. The considerations of a corporation, especially now, have nothing to do with art or music. That's why I spend my time now painting.

Camera lies all the time. It’s all it does is lie, because when you choose this moment instead of this moment, when you… the moment you’ve made a choice, you’re lying about something larger. Lying is an ugly word. I don’t mean lying. But any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.

I always saw myself as a singer-songwriter, a solo-artist, that's why working with other artists was never satisfying for me.

What I mean is sometimes, for an artist, chronic pain can be a gift.