Top 100 Good Artist Quotes
#1. A good artist ought never to allow impatience to overcome his sense of the main end of art - perfection
Michelangelo
#2. Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.
Jackson Pollock
#3. I don't want to compare myself to Picasso, but he had four or five periods in his life. Any good artist grows and changes and matures.
Tucker Max
#4. A good teacher is like a good artist. They go right to the most difficult part of whatever's going on.
Bruce Nauman
#6. Every good artist I know, I always think works hard, we're working all the time.
David Hockney
#7. To be a good artist / letterer / designer / guitar player it takes practice. A lot of it. More than you can even fathom when you're starting out.
Jessica Hische
#8. And every good artist knows that the gift comes from somewhere else, and it's there for a reason, and that's to make the world a better place.
James Lee Burke
#9. Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything.
Ad Reinhardt
#10. I do believe that it takes a strong dose of alienation to make a good artist or writer in the modern world. You can't be too well-adjusted and still have anything interesting to say.
Howard Sounes
#11. No, I don't. I find them very superficial. Calculated. He's a good artist, but I think he could be a great one, if he could use more instinct and less technique. He's a very good draftsman.
Louise Penny
#12. Being an artist doesn't mean that you're a good artist. That was the bargain I first made with myself: I'd say, I'm an artist, but I'm not really very good.
Paul Simon
#13. Being a good artist is the toughest job you could pick, and you have to be a little nuts to take it on.
Charles Saatchi
#14. I colour for a living. When I am a good artist, the only difference between me and a child is that I am more wrinkled. When I am not being a good artist, the only difference between me and a child is every difference imaginable.
Janice Tanton
#15. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.
Laozi
#16. To be a good artist, you have to serve the work of art and allow it to be what it is supposed to be.
Larry Wall
#17. It takes a long time to make a painter - even with a good artist's education - but without one it tries the patience of Job; it is a great thing if one does not go backward.
Edward Lear
#18. It's a poor artist who borrows
a good artist steals.
Pablo Picasso
#19. A good artist must be good at many things.
Rick Riordan
#20. A good artist's always got his hand in his zipper.
Patti Smith
#21. It is absurd to pretend that one cannot love the same woman always, as to pretend that a good artist needs several violins to execute a piece of music.
Honore De Balzac
#22. No amount of pay ever made a good soldier, a good teacher, a good artist, or a good workman.
John Ruskin
#23. Chaos in nature is immediately challenging and forces a good artist to impose some type of order on his or her perception of a site.
Wolf Kahn
#25. To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.
Jasper Johns
#26. There are no rules about investment. Sharks can be good. Artist's dung can be good. Oil on canvas can be good.
Charles Saatchi
#27. I think that plays are probably the most personal, because it's just me in charge, but sometimes it's just really - I think that there's honor in being a good artist, and there's honor in being a good 'craftsperson.'
David Henry Hwang
#29. There's something peculiar about artists. They have ups and downs ... After a while everything you do is just wonderful ... then you slide back. If you're a good artist you're going to go down. And then it's up to you.
Milton Resnick
#30. Well we took it apart scene by scene. We examined every sentence, every full stop, every comma. He has a most wonderful eye for detail, Roman, and you know, he's a very good artist.
Ronald Harwood
#31. I think any good artist - and I'm not saying that I am one - takes notes and should first emulate their heroes and then try to move beyond them.
Patrick Stump
#32. The first thing that any good artist has to develop is a sense of independence from the artworld. What really destroys a young artist is insecurity, the fear that everything could be taken away at any moment.
Jeff Koons
#33. What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.
Austin Kleon
#34. You really can't be a good artist if you can't say what you really feel. And people may be offended, but, you know, that's how you feel, and that is your right, and that is your gift as well.
Alice Walker
#35. The malady of civilized man is his knowledge of death. The good artist, like the wise man, addresses himself to life and invests with his private vision the deeds and thoughts of men. The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small yes at the center of a vast no.
Gore Vidal
#36. If I stop being on good behaviour for a moment, my dark little secret is that I don't actually believe many people in the art world have much feeling for art and simply cannot tell a good artist from a weak one, until the artist has enjoyed the validation of others - a received pronunciation.
Charles Saatchi
#38. A good artist is willing to die many times over. What's funny is, I've died so many times.
Billy Corgan
#39. When you get right down to it, lots of things that look fancy are easy to do, and lots of things that seem easy are hard, even if you're very creative and a good artist.
Nancy Freund
#40. That day I behaved like a good artist, one whose job is to build rather than break.
Anuradha Bhattacharyya
#41. A good artist does not just make imaginations beautiful to the mind, but also more pleasant to the eye with a superb visible touch of excellence.
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#42. A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.
Orson Welles
#43. The difference between a good artist and a bad one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal, the good one really does.
William Blake
#45. It's always exciting to get together with fellow artists to support a good cause.
Frankie J. Grande
#46. My personality is very good for nurturing. I'm very empathetic to my artists. You speak to anyone who's worked with me and they'll say, "Oh yeah, Steve's great. He doesn't have the ego."
Steve Lillywhite
#47. A good perfumer was part alchemist, part artist, and part wizard.
Lisa Kleypas
#48. I suppose the good artists, the righteous artists, somehow manage to be exuberant, and the embarrassed artist has this idea that everybody has to stop being so excited, which I find so distasteful.
John Currin
#49. I think that artists and musicians can do as much harm as good for causes if they tie their names to lots of things, especially if they aren't really doing much to meaningfully push their causes forward.
Damian Kulash
#50. I'm a believer in the notion that artists who do good work believe in the ideas of extremes.
Wayne Thiebaud
#51. I hope someone thinks I sing good. I'm always working hard to sing better. I sound the way I sound, but I can always be better. I work hard at singing and being a better recording artist.
Luke Bryan
#52. I never want to be too mean with my songs, but with 'I Hope It Rains' it was definitely somewhere in the middle with being sassy but also a little class in there as well. It was a good blend for me and who I want to be perceived as an artist.
Jana Kramer
#53. Much of the blame is the malarkey that artists have created to glorify war, which as we all know, is nonsense, and a good deal worse than that - romantic pictures of battle, and of the dead and men in uniform and all that. And I did not want to have that story told again.
Kurt Vonnegut
#54. The good thing about being an artist, is it's a legitimate way of looking at things cross-eyed.
John Chamberlain
#55. Individuality and originality is was separates good and great artists! How much they can move people with what they do! If they can shake the heart with what they do, is the key!
Hiromi
#56. To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect.
Alexander Calder
#57. There are no teachers, saints, prophets, good people, but the artists.
Virginia Woolf
#58. Giving him a wry look, Shiloh said, "I think you're forcing me to look at myself, what I want, who I am."
"Good relationships always do that for both people, Darlin'. It's just a natural progression between them. It can bring out our self-awareness. It's not easy. But it's rewarding.
Lindsay McKenna
#59. It's important for an artist to realize his own style. Copying or letting yourself be influenced by another's work is good for a start, just don't let yourself get stuck with it. Try to evolve and develop your own. Broadening your knowledge in other mediums is important in acquiring inspiration.
Arnold Arre
#60. It is just the little difference between the good and the best that makes the difference between the artist and the artisan. It is just the little touches after the average man would quit that makes the master's fame.
Orison Swett Marden
#61. If you write great songs with meaning and emotion, they will last for ever because songs are the key to everything. Songs will outlast the artist and they will go on for ever if they are good.
Elton John
#62. Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?
Aldous Huxley
#63. For me, if the music is good, whether the artist is famous or unknown, I love being part of the music and contributing what I can to the bass end.
Tony Levin
#64. We all know that a good person can be a bad artist.But no one will ever be a genuine artist unless he is a great human being and thus also a good one.
Marc Chagall
#65. There seem to be a lot of black artists making very good videos that I'm surprised aren't being used on MTV.
David Bowie
#66. To the artist, the Book of Genesis is an account of six days in which God suggested some really good ideas.
Robert Breault
#67. Comedy is the one absolutely self-aware art form. Actually, hip-hop's another one, I suppose. Because in your songs you're talking about how good a hip-hop artist you are. It's like a painter painting a panting of himself painting a painting.
Bo Burnham
#68. Fred Astaire is my hero. I love him because he was willing to kill himself to make his art look effortless. And because he proved it's possible to be an artist and a good person.
Connie Willis
#69. Katagiri Roshi says: "Poor artists. They suffer very much. They finish a masterpiece and they are not satisfied. They want to go on and do another." Yes, but it's better to go on and do another if you have the urge than to start drinking and become alcoholic or eat a pound of good fudge and get fat.
Natalie Goldberg
#70. I gotta say, the Catholic Church has churned out a lot of great artists and directors and actors, so if that's all they do, that's fine by me. If they're good at churning out tortured artists, that's great!
Paul Rust
#71. I'm an independent artist, but I do have a good business relationship with Lego, since I'm a unique customer. They're aware of what I'm doing. A painter may not have a relationship with a paint maker, but there's only one company that makes Lego.
Nathan Sawaya
#72. When you're a producer and an artist you're very critical of yourself. I like to produce other people, but I'm not that good at producing myself.
Valerie Simpson
#73. During freedom struggle, It were authors and artists who made the Nation stand with their pen, and now their pen can create an environment of renaissance when Independent India is on the path of Good Governance.
Narendra Modi
#74. An artist needs not so much an audience, as to feel a need to answer, a promise to respond ... a good feeling about his art.
Robert Pinsky
#75. Everyone wants to know what kind of music their favorite artist listens to. It feels good to. I don't try to dwell on that too much though.
Brett Dennen
#76. Those who are waiting for an epiphany to strike may wait forever. The artist simply goes to work, making art, both good and not so good.
Chuck Close
#77. Certain dressmakers desire to pass for an artist. I have one ambition: that is to have good taste.
Jean Patou
#78. Isn't every human being both a scientist and an artist; and in writing of human experience, isn't there a good deal to be said for recognizing that fact and for using both methods?
James Agee
#79. A jazz musician is a combination orator, dialectician, mathematician, athlete, entertainer, poet, singer, dancer, diplomat, educator, student, comedian, artist, seducer, public masturbator, and general all-round good fellow.
Steve Lacy
#80. I like to make records sound good. I'm more like a reducer than a producer. If an artist cannot produce themselves, what's the point?
Branford Marsalis
#81. The creative strength is good enough and deep enough to bring itself to flower and to grow in spite of this sickness.
Joanne Greenberg
#82. I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.
Barbra Streisand
#83. That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.
Ernest Hemingway,
#84. The world loves a clone and a good knock-off. It cheats the artist ... In the obsession for technical wizardry, people disappear; and if your voice isn't present in a relationship, you don't matter.
Alonzo King
#85. All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
W. H. Auden
#86. Before 'Gangnam Style' I was not a good attitude artist.
Psy
#87. Surrounding yourself with creative, imaginative people is a good strategy for success whether you're an entrepreneur seeking innovation or an artist looking for inspiration.
Harvey MacKay
#88. What is an artist? For every thousand people there's nine hundred doing the work, ninety doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky bastard who's the artist.
Tom Stoppard
#89. If it is the mark of the artist to love art before everything, to renounce everything for its sake, to think all the sweet human things of life well lost if only he may attain something, do some good, great work - then I was never an artist.
Ellen Terry
#90. I've heard many times that with all good artists it's ultimately a self-portrait even if it's an abstraction. I feel my work is very much who I am. I didn't try to make it that way; it just is. It reflects who I am and also my interests.
Joyce Tenneson
#91. 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
#92. I should ask if it was good for you," Miles murmured, "but given that evidently you acquired the answer to life, the universe, and everything, it must have been-excuse the word-cosmic.
Rowan Speedwell
#93. I'm not a pop artist. For me pop never was ... Pop is concerned with exteriors. I'm concerned with interiors. When I use objects, I see them as a vocabulary of feelings. I can spend a lot of time with objects, and they leave me as satisfied as a good meal. I don't think pop artists feel that way.
Jim Dine
#94. I feel like I'm a secondary artist, a kind of a conduit for the writer, and if it's a good writer, then I have a great road map.
Mamie Gummer
#95. I've got such great people around me. They don't really care if they make me angry. A lot of teams, they're afraid to make the artist angry, because they don't want to get fired and all that stuff. My team's pretty good about letting me know when to get in line.
Justin Bieber
#96. When I started writing, I was a great rationalist and believed I was absolutely in control. But the older one gets, the more confused, and for an artist I think that is quite a good thing: you allow in more of your instinctual self; your dreams, fantasies and memories. It's richer, in a way.
John Banville
#97. It's valuable to me as an artist and actor to explore all kinds of outlets. So if a local filmmaker in Milwaukee had a good story, I'd be part of it in a second.
Tanya Fischer
#98. I'm in awe of you, Rowan Palotay," he said softly. "And plan to make love to you for the rest of the night, but right now, I want you to be a good cowgirl and ride me."
His finger hooked around the string of her panties, and he tugged them down and off. "The boots stay on.
Robin Bielman
#99. If an artist is any good at all, then he or she will have a later phase that's more interesting than the early one.
Clive James
#100. Maybe that, really, is as good a definition as any of an artist in the world: a ruthless person.
Claire Messud
