Artists Life Quotes

#1. Ideas are the old-age of art. Artists have to keep young; they must not think too much - thought is death, while art is life. Such was Emile's viewpoint.

Laura Riding

#2. The very secret of life for me, I believed, was to maintain in the midst of rushing events an inner tranquility.

Margaret Bourke-White

#3. I've noticed in my life that as you work on more things with more people, you spend less time hanging out with other people who are artists, creative people who give you a sense of family.

Aaron Rose

#4. To a large degree, we are still bound to the modern scientific spirit, that characterizes reality merely by its material and mechanic aspects, without including life, consciousness and the intimate communion with that which poets, musicians and artists bring us in their magnificent works.

Leonardo Boff

#5. As an artist I have always tried to be faithful to my vision of life, and I have frequently been in conflict with those who wanted me to paint not what I saw but what they wished me to see.

Diego Rivera

#6. As an artist, one of the toughest things to do is getting someone to understand why you think the way you think. And as much as i don't wanna care what they think about my thinking, it comes down to making them understand or watching them leave.

Darnell Lamont Walker

#7. They say the music you listen to in your formative years stays with you and leaves an impression for the rest of your life. For me, the things that I fell in love with happened in the '70s, when artists were nurtured by record companies and it wasn't about singles.

Nikki Sixx

#8. Artists never make wars. They are too busy making life out of the matter of their visions.

Marya Mannes

#9. We all tell our own stories the way we live our lives. My story is: Life is too short to not believe in fresh voices. I don't have Hollywood stars. I have great American artists.

Kevin McCollum

#10. Fame is not the same as success, and in our true souls we know that.

Julia Cameron

#11. A writer's heart, a poet's heart, an artist's heart, a musician's heart is always breaking. It is through that broken window that we see the world ...

Alice Walker

#12. The work of great poetry is to aid us to become free artists ourselves ... The art of reading poetry is an authentic training in the augmentation of consciousness, perhaps the most authentic of healthy modes.

Harold Bloom

#13. Fame is a spiritual drug. It is often a by-product of our artistic work, but like nuclear waste, it can be a very dangerous by-product.

Julia Cameron

#14. The sooner you finish procrastinating, the sooner you can get back to your art.

Stephanie Lennox

#15. Even the Impressionists, the most innovative artists of their time, sought to paint realistically. They believed that their freer way of portraying the visible world was truer to life than the literal realism of the 'salon painters' who dominated French art throughout the 19th century.

Terry Teachout

#16. We, the artists, make the stuff they sell and they're like ticks on our backs, sucking the life out of us.

Malcolm Wilson

#17. I like "Julie Gold's song "From a Distance". Her song reminds me of the world as seen through an observer's eye. Seen from a distance, we are people in the same band playing music for everyone. We are artists who play the most beautiful instruments in the world - life.

Ilchi Lee

#18. Don't trust anyone who promises you a new life. Pick-up artists, lifestyle gurus, pyramid-scheme face cream evangelists, Weight Watchers coaches: These people make their living off of your failures.

Lindy West

#19. Writers are the most tormented of all the different categories of artists that are out there in the world.

Janvier Chouteu-Chando

#20. It's ironic that people speak of artists as dreamers. I think they are the most grounded people around. Conscious and present. As an artist, you really see life, connect with its beauty, and create something that shares those observations with others. You notice things.

Danny Gregory

#21. If an artist wants to be original, he should not look to art for inspiration, for art seeks its model in life, not art - and only life is rich enough to simulate originality.

Anthony Marais

#22. What is it at which all true artists are aiming? It is life, it is reality.

John Edgar Park

#23. I think we should throw money at artists, not at girls who take their clothes off because they made a bad choice in life.

Darnell Lamont Walker

#24. Artists are nearest God. Into their souls he breathes his life, and from their hands it comes in fair, articulate forms to bless the world.

J.G. Holland

#25. Most of the time, the artists are not supposed to wear the fashion. It is always seen as a vanity. But I think I don't need to prove anything in my life. I can honestly say I love fashion and I can be many things at the same time.

Marina Abramovic

#26. I think all artists are only interested in a couple of themes, really. I'm primarily interested in change and connection as being this restorative force. I write about them because that's what I think about in my own life.

Lauren Oliver

#27. Fear doesn't go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.

Steven Pressfield

#28. Now, there are people that are Christian artists, because they have a purpose to be evangelical for Christ. I don't feel I've been called to that yet. Now, that could change. There's no telling what kind of call God will put on my life.

Scott Stapp

#29. It's nice to sometimes get things out of life, rather than stealing from other artists. I'm trying to steal from the real people.

John Hawkes

#30. I can create my imagination because i am an Artist.!

Manish Suthar

#31. Our dedication- devotion- to craft should enlighten as it humbles us.

Ivan Brunetti

#32. Up on the Brooklyn Bridge a man is standing in agony, waiting to jump, or waiting to write a poem, or waiting for the blood to leave his vessels because if he advances another foot the pain of his love will kill him.

Henry Miller

#33. I value those artists who embody the expression of their life.

Wassily Kandinsky

#34. For me, being transparent about every aspect of my life is what makes my music relatable and how I'm able to be an individual amongst the mass amounts of other artists.

Macklemore

#35. If nothing will finally survive of life besides what artists report of it, we have no right to report what we know to be lies.

Alison Lurie

#36. It isn't that I dislike artists, but I can't stand anyone who puts on those ponderous airs of a man of character.

Osamu Dazai

#37. i Create. I don't "Need".
Meaning: I don't need advice or criticism.
Unless you're offering money, weed, or whiskey save it. Thanks.

Jonathan Heatt

#38. If asked to list my ten favorite American fiction writers, Gail Godwin would be among them. In this, her latest ... she evokes in a short book the long married life of two artists. Evenings at Five is a strong tale of love-after-death.

Ned Rorem

#39. The song, 'Life is Better,' is about hip-hop. It's about my love for hip-hop. And, you know, I go through all the artists from the beginning to the end, you know. And, well, not to the end, but since the beginning to now, you know.

Q-Tip

#40. If I were not able to separate the art from the artists, I think I would limit myself a great deal, and life wouldn't be nearly as interesting.

Jessye Norman

#41. Words do not always need a destination.
We can leave them behind us at the borders of feelings.
Running around headless in the vague zone.
And that is the privilege of artists: to live in confusion.

David Foenkinos

#42. We can either own our circumstances and be creative in them, or we can throw up our hands and say, I cannot be held accountable because the conditions are not ideal.

Patti Digh

#43. The soul of an artist cannot be muted indefinitely. It must either be expressed or it will consume the host.

Gerard De Marigny

#44. I thought, 'A biennial needs artists. I'm going to do an international biennial; I need artists from all around the world.' So what I did was I invented a hundred artists from around the world. I figured out their bios, their passions in life and their art styles, and I started making their work.

Shea Hembrey

#45. Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.

W. Somerset Maugham

#46. Unfortunately life has a way of sidetracking one's greatest ambitions. Painters, would-be artists, end up whitewashing walls. Sculptors are forced to design toilets. Writers become critics or publicists. Archaeologists, like myself, can become gravediggers.

Salman Rushdie

#47. To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life.
(Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935)

Dorothy L. Sayers

#48. I urge younger artists to know that you don't have to be anything you don't want. You can do whatever's comfortable for you. From the music I make, to the things I do in my life, I'm true to my R&B core. I have the capability to make pop records and crossover, but that's not my aim.

Trey Songz

#49. Being Southern and being the guy I've been all my life, I've lived more on the lighter side of life. I have a dark side, but that's not where I come from. A lot of artists like to come from that.

Josh Holloway

#50. There is more to representing art than selling art. The life of the gallery is dependent on the renewal and refreshment of its artists and dealers. When that stops happening, it's the end.

Arne Glimcher

#51. You've always lived a life of pretense, not a real life
a simulated existence, not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real.

Thomas Bernhard

#52. Artists were always referred to as great artists. I thought that's what the profession was. One word: great-artist. There wasn't one moment in my life when I thought I wanted to be anything else.

Hedda Sterne

#53. You know how creative people are, we have to try everything until we find our niche.

E.A. Bucchianeri

#54. In my experience, what every true artist wants, really wants, is to be paid.

Terry Pratchett

#55. That's my favorite subject because it really levels the playing field for artists these days. You don't have to sell out to the record company. You don't have to get a five hundred thousand dollars, or whatever, and pay them back for the rest of your life to record a record.

Roger McGuinn

#56. I wanted to be a pariah, because all my heroes were cult artists, people who devoted their lives to poking into very narrow, very deep corners - Erik Satie, Alfred Jarry, Malcolm Lowry - people who suffered in order to express their vision of life.

Jim Woodring

#57. We were really poor when I was growing up; my parents, both artists, were bohemians. Life was a desperate struggle, but in service of a high ideal, which is exactly what my photographs are about.

Justine Kurland

#58. When people say that nothing happens in their lives I believe them. But you must understand that everything happens to an artist; time is always redeemed, nothing is lost and wonders never cease.

Muriel Spark

#59. Female artists are the perfect example of a creator: They know how to make life and art with their bodies. Life comes from their bodies, so on a very basic level, they have more to write about.

Brandon Boyd

#60. Why is it every other person you meet says they're an artist? A real artist doesn't need to gas on about it, he doesn't have time. He does his work and sweats it out in silence, and no one can help him at all.

Paula McLain

#61. Real artist cannot be blackmailed. I suspect they've been confessing shit all their life.

Darnell Lamont Walker

#62. Taffy bounds up to him and gives him a sloppy, drunken hug. "Oh my God, I knew your art would be awesome!" she gushes.
Bitch. How dare she intrude on our private moment!

Kitsy Clare

#63. Artists with the lack of proper education and experience of working from life will copy whatever is visible on the photograph, without knowing what's underneath. As a result, instead of creating the in-depth and full of character portrait, they draw a mask with no soul.

Igor Babailov

#64. Artists are controlled by the life that beats in them, like the ocean beats on the shore.

Dorothea Lange

#65. Artists never seem to get bored with life.

John Kurtz

#66. I realised the bohemian life was not for me. I would look around at my friends, living like starving artists, and wonder, 'Where's the art?' They weren't doing anything. And there was so much interesting stuff to do, so much fun to be had ... maybe I could even quit renting.

P. J. O'Rourke

#67. What are we artists for? We are for showing you what you've wandered for to find the home of your spirit ...

Hiroko Sakai

#68. Artists must be men of wit, consciously or unconsciously philosophers; read, study and think a great deal of life ...

Robert Henri

#69. I couldn't do country, with all due respect to all country music artists. My parents dressed me up with a cowboy hat and we'd go to the rodeo when I was younger and it traumatized me for life.

Chris Colfer

#70. Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.

Julia Cameron

#71. Many jazz artists go to L.A. seeking a more comfortable life and then they really stop playing.

Sonny Rollins

#72. I'm so proud that my offspring became a musician. I'm full of awe that we are able to have a whole family live the life of artists.

Maxine Hong Kingston

#73. I am not afraid to die because I know heaven is a place of artists, musicians and poets

Rassool Jibraeel Snyman

#74. I'm quite sure that all true professional artists, of every description, in all walks of life, whether their craft is painting, music, sculpture, medicine or anything, have one primary concern - mankind.

Chico Hamilton

#75. A world turned into a stereotype, a society converted into a regiment, a life translated into a routine, make it difficult for either art or artists to survive. Crush individuality in society and you crush art as well. Nourish the conditions of a free life and you nourish the arts, too.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#76. That kind of pursuit is not beneficial to mankind: art for self aggrandizement at the cost of love.

Anuradha Bhattacharyya

#77. I guess I get bored easily, and thank God. I don't want to all my life pound only the same key, although some artists do it very effectively. I'm not trying to denigrate anybody.

John Baldessari

#78. I know there are a lot of musicians and a lot of artists, and there are a lot of writers and other people who inspire young people, but I'd like to see somebody in political life be able to connect and make these choices that we need to make in Washington real in terms of people's lives.

John F. Kerry

#79. Citizen's Band radio renders one accessible to a wide variety of people from all walks of life. It should not be forgotten that all walks of life include conceptual artists, dry cleaners, and living poets.

Fran Lebowitz

#80. The artist and the politician stand at opposite poles. The artist enhances life by his prolonged concentration upon it, while the politician emphasizes the impersonal aspect of life by his attempts to fit men into groups.

Richard Wright

#81. A great thing happening now in art is that artists are using the figure, the body, clothing, life.

Issey Miyake

#82. An artist's work is one long conversation with life.

Marty Rubin

#83. I feel like artists that are always quite sad in real life always make really happy music, and artists who are really bouncy and bubbly always make really sad music.

Marina And The Diamonds

#84. I know artists whose medium is life itself, and who express the inexpressible without brush, pencil, chisel or guitar. They neither paint nor dance. Their medium is Being. Whatever their hand touches has increased life ... They are the artists of being alive.

Frederick Franck

#85. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.

Henry David Thoreau

#86. Why is joy not considered a fit subject for an artist?

Eugene Manlove Rhodes

#87. I saw 'Sleeping Beauty' when I was, like, 6 years old at the Mercury Theatre. Then, when I came to Disney, I was in the company of these wonderful artists. People like Glen Keane, like Mark Henn, who were brilliant animators who could really bring these things to life.

John Musker

#88. Music is art, art is life, and we are who we are, and all of these aforementioned women, unless they should choose not to, will be performing well into the next many decades because they are great artists.

Lara St. John

#89. In order to thrive as artists we need to be available to the universal flow. When we put a stopper on our capacity for joy by anorectically declining the small gifts of life, we turn aside the larger gifts as well.

Julia Cameron

#90. Am reading the life of Mozart and cannot help thinking that one's capacity for suffering is in direct proportion to one's greatness.

Lily Koppel

#91. I want to be able to say, 'you think you're odd, I'm even odder and I made it - you can too!' I want to direct, do more with 'The Dance Scene,' sign artists and just provide opportunities. I'm just getting started and having the time of my life!

Laurieann Gibson

#92. It is only too true that a lot of artists are mentally ill - it's a life which, to put it mildly, makes one an outsider. I'm all right when I completely immerse myself in work, but I'll always remain half crazy.

Vincent Van Gogh

#93. The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#94. To be a writer and political is a dangerous thing. To be a writer and apolitical is even more dangerous. Art is right, left; in truth, it has only one direction and that is forward.

Chris Campanioni

#95. My whole life, I have listened to people like Neil Young, or Crosby, Stills & Nash, and artists that have made a career out of the mellow, folky, acoustic dynamic.

Dave Grohl

#96. Life direct ... is what Flaubert and Joyce have convinced themselves the man may never get quite clear of but the artist has nothing to do with. What they can't admit is that t is overrated: which artists, faking and fumbling it together out of spit and toothpicks, should know best of all.

Marvin Mudrick

#97. The bohemian life that reigned in Paris until the end of the '50s is gone. The artists had more time to think, to reflect; success didn't come so suddenly.

Pontus Hulten

#98. You know, artists don't really have all that much experience of life. We make a huge amount out of the small experience that we do have.

John Banville

#99. I'm not the type of artist that's like, 'Let's go out and party and dance your life away!' I think those artists are so cool, but I wanted meaning in my songs and they have messages.

Claudia Lee

#100. Yes, but the artist?" said Nigel almost fiercely. "He's different, you know he is. He's driven by some compulsion: if he can't do what he knows he has to do with his life he might as well be dead. He's got to break through the world's indifference, or else break himself against it. He can't help it.

Mary Stewart