Quotes on Great Artist

In my naïvety, I thought people who were in rock 'n' roll bands were great artists, and it was a huge shock to the system to realise that they weren't, that they didn't even aspire to be, really. Some of them did, maybe, but some of them, like Samson, were very frightened of the idea.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture.

As nearly as possible in the spirit of Matthew Salinger, age one, urging a luncheon companion to accept a cool lima bean, I urge my editor, mentor and (heaven help him) closest friend, William Shawn, genius domus of The New Yorker, lover of the long shot, protector of the unprolific, defender of the hopelessly flamboyant, most unreasonably modest of born great artist-editors to accept this pretty skimpy-looking book.

Cookery is a wholly unselfish art: as 'art for art's sake' it is unthinkable. A man may sing in his bath every morning without the least encouragement, but no cook can cook just for his or her own sake in a like manner. All good cooks, like all great artists, must have an audience worth cooking for.

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.

A great artist can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is ... and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be ... more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo see that this lovely young girl is still alive

The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

For great things do not done just happen by impulse but are a succession of small things linked together.

The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.

All great scientists have, in a certain sense, been great artists; the man with no imagination may collect facts, but he cannot make great discoveries.

Artists are the antennae of the race, but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust the great artists.

Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.

Every day a new picture is painted and framed, held up for half an hour, in such lights as the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn, and the curtain falls. And then the sun goes down, and long the afterglow gives light.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

All great artists and thinkers are great workers.

All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.