Quotes on Artist

I really am a believer that 99.99% of all the stories we need, not only as artists but as human beings, not only as writers but as readers, haven't been written yet. Certainly haven't been published yet.

Out of an intuitive experience of the world comes a continuous flow of novel distinctions. Purely rational understanding, on the other hand, serves to confirm old mindsets, rigid categories. Artists, who live in the same world as the rest of us, steer clear of these mindsets to make us see things anew.

The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power, but by the quality and achievements of its representative individuals - its philosophers, its poets and its artists.

I'm sure I would have been considered a more significant artist if I was a singer-songwriter. It's just not the way I roll. I love being a curator and a musicologist. People write me letters and thank me for turning them on to Fred McDowell and Sippie Wallace, and that's partly my job this time around.

The artist's experience lies so unbelievably close to the sexual, to its pain and its pleasure, that the two phenomena are really just different forms of one and the same longing and bliss.

The artist confronts chaos. The whole thing of art is, how do you organize chaos?

If you're any kind of artist, you make a miraculous journey, and you come back and make some statements in shapes and colors of where you were.

Mother Nature is the true artist and our job as cooks is to allow her to shine.

An artist is above all a human being, profoundly human to the core. If the artist can't feel everything that humanity feels, if the artist isn't capable of loving until he forgets himself and sacrifices himself if necessary, if he won't put down his magic brush and head the fight against the oppressor, then he isn't a great artist.

When the motives of artists are profound, when they are at their work as a result of deep consideration, when they believe in the importance of what they are doing, their work creates a stir in the world.

It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense. Only fools and charlatans think they know and understand everything. The stupider they are, the wider they conceive their horizons to be. And if an artist decides to declare that he understands nothing of what he sees - this in itself constitutes a considerable clarity in the realm of thought, and a great step forward.

My philosophy is that I'm an artist. I perform an art not with a paint brush or a camera. I perform with bodily movement. Instead of exhibiting my art in a museum or a book or on canvas, I exhibit my art in front of the multitudes.

It's [programming] the only job I can think of where I get to be both an engineer and an artist. There's an incredible, rigorous, technical element to it, which I like because you have to do very precise thinking. On the other hand, it has a wildly creative side where the boundaries of imagination are the only real limitation.

Reverence for life . . . does not allow the scholar to live for his science alone, even if he is very useful . . . the artist to exist only for his art, even if he gives inspiration to many. . . . It refuses to let the business man imagine that he fulfills all legitimate demands in the course of his business activities. It demands from all that they should sacrifice a portion of their own lives for others.

The observation of nature is part of an artist's life, it enlarges his form [and] knowledge, keeps him fresh and from working only by formula, and feeds inspiration.

It used to be that youd have a song recorded by a major country artist and if it was a hit, you could buy a car. Now you can buy a dealership.

Subjective artists are one-eyed, but objective artists are blind.

I did not know it then, but Frida had already become the most important fact in my life. And would continue to be, up to the moment she died, 27 years later.

I hope to live all my life for my art, without abandoning my principles one iota.

All children are artists, and it is an indictment of our culture that so many of them lose their creativity, their unfettered imaginations, as they grow older.

But the one thing you should. not do is to suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.