Artists Are Quotes

#1. Some artists are told what to like and told definitions of what the music business is. That's a problem. Music is artistry, and you want your music heard, your act known. But artists don't know. They are ignorant the minute they sign a contract.

Chuck D

#2. One could say that artists are people who think naturally in highly patterned ways.

Helen Vendler

#3. Artists are mostly shits of the worst order. You wouldn't want one living next door to you. Think about it: Vincent Van Gogh living next door, coming over to borrow your ear and a cup of sugar every morning-Good God!

Stan Brakhage

#4. It should be if you're a good singer and a good songwriter, you should have your spot. You get everybody trying to release the prettiest guy, but that doesn't mean they're the best artist. Most of the time the true artists are just normal old dudes.

Randy Houser

#5. Artists are meant to be madmen, to disturb and shock us.

Anne Rice

#6. Artists are the worst [people]. They are selfish, self-centred; they don't care what happens.

Ai Weiwei

#7. We feel closer to the drawings on the walls of Chauvet than the painting of, say, an Egyptian mural. These artists are not remote ancestors; they are brothers. They saw like us; they drew like us. We wear essentially the same clothes against the cold.

Simon McBurney

#8. I don't think artists are made, I think they're born.

Captain Beefheart

#9. I think a lot of actors, comedians, musicians, artists are drawn to this world, because you're allowed to excavate whatever it is that you're struggling with, and hopefully turn it into art.

Sandra Bullock

#10. Here's the thing: all of us come from some place of wanting to be seen, understood, accepted, connected. Every single one of us wants to be believed. Artists are often just ... louder about it.

Amanda Palmer

#11. Artists are the only people in a society who will tell that society the truth about itself.

James Baldwin

#12. Artists are free to push boundaries to make art. But when pushing boundaries is their only aim, the result is usually bad art.

Jane Lynch

#13. Artists are inspired by blank canvases.

Stephanie Perkins

#14. There is a line from the Marina Tsvetaeva poem I'm so fond of: "In this most Christian of worlds/ All poets are Jews." What she means is that writers and artists are outside the normal flow of daily life, the normal flow of society in general.

Paul Auster

#15. Artists are not your art monkeys. They are your collaborators. They should be given all due consideration to follow their journey.

Brian Michael Bendis

#16. I think that what most artists are trying to do is trying to understand. I think what distinguishes creative people and/or artists from another type of person is perhaps a willingness to go headlong into that uncertainty.

Brandon Boyd

#17. We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.

Pablo Picasso

#18. People might look at you a bit funny, but it's okay. Artists are allowed to be a bit different.

Bob Ross

#19. Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think.

Lawrence Durrell

#20. Artists are often poignantly careless about making and keeping friends.

Eric Maisel

#21. Most famous artists are created by their work and the idea of them as a character, and if they're smart and ambitious, they reinforce that character because they want to win. They want their views to prevail.

Dave Hickey

#22. Artists are not cheerleaders, and we're not the heads of tourism boards. We expose and discuss what is problematic, what is contradictory, what is hurtful and what is silenced in the culture we're in.

Junot Diaz

#23. My whole art is based on escaping life and reality, which might not the best tendency to have when you're trying to be a good person in general. But people can escape into my world easily - artists are supposed to create a keyhole that people can look into.

Lykke Li

#24. I felt really lucky that 'Hairstyles Of The Damned' and 'The Boy Detective Fails' were both bestsellers, and I thought that donating the money from 'Demons' was a good way to respond to that. My favorite artists are the ones that are willing to experiment, even if it means a smaller audience.

Joe Meno

#25. I think artists are always investigating how to have an economic, political platform. At one time, artists were supported by the Church. Then they were supported also by the state.

Jeff Koons

#26. True artists are almost the only men who do their work for pleasure.

Auguste Rodin

#27. Different artists are talking about the laws that exist and how they need to be fixed so that compensation does happen to a far fairer level. And I agree with that.

Stevie Wonder

#28. What motivates me is the chance to improve the world in my own special way; to contribute to the fight that all artists are fighting. I want to hold the mirror up to society and help them see themselves more clearly. I also love just making people laugh.

Jinkx Monsoon

#29. Artists are better at finding a way to kill their time.

John Baldessari

#30. What is nice about country music today is that most artists are not trying to do something everybody else is doing. They really are trying to develop their own uniqueness.

Bryan White

#31. Photography is always a kind of stealing. A theft from the subject. Artists are assaulters in a lot of ways, and the viewer is complicit in that assault.

Hanya Yanagihara

#32. Artists are people who are not at all interested in the facts - only in the truth.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#33. To me, the greatest artists are almost entirely non-verbal.

Peter Schjeldahl

#34. Artists are going to be the metronome of this society.

Yoko Ono

#35. All artists are egotistical maniacs with inferiority complexes.

Lionel Richie

#36. He said, Yeah, well, artists are a lot like gangsters. They both know that the official version, the one everyone else believes, is a lie.

Russell Banks

#37. A lot of my favorite artists are fashion icons.

Theophilus London

#38. A lot of artists are such narcissists.

Kristen Stewart

#39. Solo artists are generally totally insane. Elton John? Slightly eccentric. George Michael? He's mad as custard.

Noel Gallagher

#40. Artists are the only people in the world who really live. The others have to hope for heaven.

John French Sloan

#41. English artists are usually entirely ruined by residence in Italy.

John Ruskin

#42. Artists are most themselves when they are out of their minds, transcending the ego skirmishes of conceptual thought, and intuitively relinquishing control to the greater Creator

Alex Grey

#43. Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done.
That would be you.

Seth Godin

#44. When I go into rehearsal rooms and meet with bands, they're genuinely excited to be with me because of what I've done as an artist, not because of anything else. There's that whole celebrity rock star thing, and artists are into artists who have been able to achieve success their way.

Nikki Sixx

#45. The only people left in America who seem not to be artists are illustrators.

Brad Holland

#46. Art is often born from inner struggle. Artists are plagued by impulses they must express. Contentment does not seek action but struggle always seeks release, and for the creative it can take the form of art.

Eric Gibbons

#47. The best artists are gone now.

Johnny Winter

#48. A lot of artists are just really stupid about money, and it's really hard to find somebody who kind of thinks of shuffling money around and doing business as an art.

Kathleen Hanna

#49. On the radio there's only a certain amount of artists: Jay-Z, Beyonce, Kanye, T-Pain, Lil Wayne, T.I., Mary J Blige, Alicia Keys. Other artists are achieving things that are really special, they have a hard time getting people's attention. Music has been just a little bit lacklustre.

Q-Tip

#50. Great artists are like loaded guns. They are dangerous in anybody's hands.

Peter M. Brant

#51. Many of us believe that 'real artists' do not experience self-doubt. In truth, artists are people who have learned to live with doubt and do the work anyway.

Julia Cameron

#52. These are dangerous days we live in and you, the artists, are our last defense.

Frank Iero

#53. I think all those artists are artists who are appreciated because you believe their words and you appreciate their honesty in their music. If you don't appreciate the honesty in the music, the beat can be fly as hell but you'll never give an emcee props.

Talib Kweli

#54. Artists are losing the choice to use film. People have a love for it - the grain, how it feels, the texture.

Keanu Reeves

#55. The adventure of composition is a mystery. The muse has her ways, she hides from you, comes for you in the middle of the night, at midday, at dawn. You must believe wholeheartedly in this divine power. Its an elusive gift that can appear at any time, anywhere. Artists are in awe of it.

Mickey Hart

#56. We artists are hypersensitive, or we wouldn't be - couldn't be - artists.

R. O. Blechman

#57. What more really can be at stake except life itself, which is why maybe artists are always equating the two and driving everybody crazy by insisting that art is life. Well. Cut us some slack. It's harder work than one might imagine, and riskier, and takes a very special and dear kind of mad person.

Peter Heller

#58. A friend of mine says his two favorite artists are Picasso and Rembrandt. Picasso because he paints the beautiful in such an ugly fashion. And Rembrandt because he paints the ugly so beautifully.

Anna Torv

#59. I think that most artists are leaning towards fragile idiots.

Josh Silver

#60. Artists are the radical voice of civilization.

Paul Robeson

#61. The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.

Jean Cocteau

#62. I think artists are driven by the engine of their own talent, but it's a question of what use they put it to.

Tim Curry

#63. I think the obligation of an artist is to make a difference in the world. That is what matters most to me. I think that artists are the leaders of the world because they do not have a connection to the industrial complex, the day-to-day short-term survival that most people are involved with.

James Cromwell

#64. I can't let the baggage of my private life get into work. Artists are more fragile than normal people. But I know that I am a role model for zillions of people, so no matter how deep you are hurting, you need to come out strong.

Bipasha Basu

#65. Artists are social sensors and transmitters of ideas

Natasha Tsakos

#66. Artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.

Sol LeWitt

#67. Con artists are using Obamacare confusion to sign people up for fake health insurance. The scammers lure victims with false promises like, 'If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan.' The scammers will tell you that, so you have to be careful.

Jay Leno

#68. Artists are never poor, they just don't get enough time to make money !

Brahmananda Patra

#69. All artists are illusionists of one kind or another.

Mike Svob

#70. When artists are burdened with the label of "genius," I think they lose the ability to take themselves lightly, or to create freely.

Elizabeth Gilbert

#71. Artists are overcompensating with this aggressive, energetic, hyperstimulating music - it's like someone shaking you. But it can't move people on an emotional level.

Thomas Bangalter

#72. Artists are perennially implored to consider 'the limitations of the medium.' Whoever invented this expression exaggerated the limitations of the English language. We are not concerned with what effects cannot be produced with our materials.

Walter J. Phillips

#73. Hip-hop artists, especially the older ones, are the ones who knew hip-hop was a worldwide phenomenon before the mainstream caught on, so hip-hop artists are forward thinkers. We want to stay with the new.

Nas

#74. There are no categories in contemporary art. There are no rules. Artists are given the freedom to make and create whatever they please and call it whatever they please. I identify with that system, or lack of system, much more than I do the landscape of contemporary publishing.

James Frey

#75. Artists are supposed to be the ones with imagination. A good part of our job description is to get regular people to use theirs.

Robert Genn

#76. Artists are the people that no matter what, pick up the pen, pick up a paintbrush. They take the time to translate what is happening to create something that resonates deeply with the rest of the people that are caught in the middle of their own reality.

Anna Deavere Smith

#77. Artists are very young, and say, Um, ok, to these industry dudes.

Nikki Sixx

#78. Hip hop is ever changing and has definitely entered a new era. Many fans have mixed feelings over the direction of rap as more and more artists are emerging with content that some would describe as less than meaningful.

Eric Thomas

#79. All artists are two-headed calves.

Truman Capote

#80. I love my body. I'm very much OK with it. I don't think artists are ever the ones who have the problem with their weight, it is other people.

Kelly Clarkson

#81. I think all artists are looking for a subject or are sometimes unsure of their subject, but immigrant artists bring another culture to that and they bring also the place where the original culture meets the new culture.

Edwidge Danticat

#82. Artists are like everybody else.

Damien Hirst

#83. The films I grew up loving, and the art that I love, is not generally the kind of postmodern ironic winking stuff. What lasts is the stuff in which the artists are totally in league with the subject.

James Gray

#84. Artists are the serfs of a leisure society.

Bauvard

#85. Artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive.
They are supersensitive.
They keel over like canaries in coal mines filled with poison gas,
long before more robust types realize that any danger is there.

Kurt Vonnegut

#86. What I've learnt about artists over the years is, artists are usually the opposite to their music.

Marina And The Diamonds

#87. We have a lot of secondary market problems in the U.K.; it's really bad there. And lots of artists are starting to participate in it, because they put the tickets up at a certain price, then the tickets get marked up by the secondary sellers, and someone else gets twice as much as you.

Mick Jagger

#88. In free society art is not a weapon ... Artists are not engineers of the soul.

John F. Kennedy

#89. Great artists are modest almost as seldom as they are faithful to their wives.

H.L. Mencken

#90. Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#91. I think musicians and artists are the most philanthropic people I know. Their charity record of the music business would hold up to the work of anybody.

Glenn Frey

#92. Art pulls a community together ... Art makes you feel differently. That's what artists are doing all the time, shifting and changing the way you see life.

Lister Sinclair

#93. I read a lot of graphic novels - some of my favorites graphic novelists or artists are Rebecca Kraatz, Gabrielle Bell, Graham Roumieu, Tom Gauld, and Renee French.

Matthea Harvey

#94. Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.

Cesare Pavese

#95. I think, for the most part, our culture embraces that artists are born, not made.

Chris Van Allsburg

#96. [W]e have reason to ask what artists are working specially for children, and whether they are running with the popular tide or saying something special.... In America, we had the 'parlor gift book' makers, but we also had Howard Pyle.

Louise Seaman Bechtel

#97. Artists are often excellent businessmen. They have to be. Otherwise they do not remain artists.

A. Y. Jackson

#98. I have found, and most artists are probably this way, that [when] you're working on some kind of idea, the idea makes demands.

Michelle Stuart

#99. Critics are more committed to the rules of art than artists are.

Mason Cooley

#100. Some artists are normal people who just happen to make things because we can't figure out how in the hell to communicate with people.

Scott Nicholson