Top 100 True Artist Quotes
#1. As with any true artist, change is the only constant.
Tony MacAlpine
#2. A true artist should have no secrets. On the stage, you must be able to transmit every emotion to the spectator.
Anna Pavlova
#3. Hypnotically haunting sounds from a true artist that dares to dream.
John Lindberg
#4. In my experience, what every true artist wants, really wants, is to be paid.
Terry Pratchett
#5. A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him non-existent
Oscar Wilde
#6. For a true artist, difficulties become opportunities and clouds become solid present.
Alejandro Jodorowsky
#7. An artist's career doesn't happen in the cycle of one week of news. An artist's career happens in a lifetime, and if you're a true artist you're willing to die for what you believe in.
Kanye West
#8. If heaven gives me ten more years, or an extension of even five years, I shall surely become a true artist.
Hokusai
#9. Of course Nebraska is a storehouse of literary material. Everywhere is a storehouse of literary material. If a true artist were born in a pigpen and raised in a sty, he would still find plenty of inspiration for his work. The only need is the eye to see.
Willa Cather
#10. I love Darius Rucker. He's a true artist, a great songwriter who can play his instrument, sing and write about his life.
Randy Houser
#11. Do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation
Vladimir Nabokov
#13. The true artist is known by what he annexes, and he annexes everything.
Oscar Wilde
#14. A true artist does not depend on radio for success. A true fan does not let radio determine what they support
Talib Kweli
#15. The sad work of a true artist speaks to us in that tone of people who have suffered, who force anyone who has suffered to drop everything and listen.
Marcel Proust
#18. The true artist can only labor con amore.
Victor Hugo
#19. The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths.
Bruce Nauman
#20. I am not worthy to be on a Mariah Carey record. She's a true artist, so I just step back and watch the genius occur.
Nick Cannon
#21. Prince.. a true artist in every sense of the world.Gone way too soon.
Quincy Jones
#22. Departure from the literal aspect, rather than mechanical exactness, is the code of the true artist. However, departures are the result of studied intent rather than inability.
Edgar Alwin Payne
#23. The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#24. To cherish perfection is to commit creative suicide, and every true artist knows that a masterpiece is an accident that should be burned.
Barry Hughart
#25. The true artist stands midway between what he imagines and what he does. He is the one who is 'capable of.' he could be what he describes, experience what he writes. The mere act would limit him; he would be the one who has acted.
Albert Camus
#26. I know a lot of people who are not here anymore, and I wonder why I'm still here ... Not a day goes by that I don't think about Sam Cooke. His presence is so strong and so convincing to me, a true artist, a true talent, who never talked down to people.
Bobby Womack
#27. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers.
Isaac Asimov
#28. Every true artist is the salvation of every other. Only artists produce for each other a world that is fit to live in.
D.H. Lawrence
#29. It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.
Oscar Wilde
#30. Mother Nature is the true artist and our job as cooks is to allow her to shine.
Marco Pierre White
#31. A true artist creates art because they have a passion and desire to do so.
Anne-Rae Vasquez
#32. Beauty is itself so unattainable that it escapes altogether; and the true artist, like the true Mystic, can never rest
Aleister Crowley
#33. For the true artist, there is no trivial thing.
Marty Rubin
#34. A true artist is driven by the never-ending desire to create.
Lee Hammond
#36. To a true artist only that face is beautiful which, quite apart from its exterior, shines with the truth within the soul.
Mahatma Gandhi
#37. I say that the true artist seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own human conscience.
J.D. Salinger
#38. Creativity is not enough ... the skill of the true artist is to show the real in the light of the ideal and so transfigure it.
Roger Scruton
#39. With the true artist, the social formula that he recommends is a matter of secondary importance; the source of his art, its animating spirit, is decisive.
Rosa Luxemburg
#40. A true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.
George Bernard Shaw
#41. Every true artist should look upon a review without judgment, anger or disdain, with the realization that the reviewer has exposed far more of their true selves in their words, than you have, in your art.
Robert Black
#42. A true artist is someone who gives birth to a new reality.
Plato
#43. A true artist willingly removes their heart, allows constructive criticism to stomp it, then puts it back
bruised and aching
to continue improving due to the all-consuming obsessive love for their art.
H.G. Mewis
#44. No one can make the album they made 10 years ago with a straight face. There are two reasons: one is you change as a person. To be a true artist, I have to be true to who I am now and write that way. And the second thing is these are different times.
Brad Paisley
#46. To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel - not the way others think you should feel.
Don Ellis
#47. The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#48. Art was not created as a way to riches. Strive to become a true artist; all else will take care of itself.
Robert Schumann
#49. A true artist removes his heart willingly, allows constructive criticism to stomp it, then puts it back - bruised and aching - as he continues to strive for excellence due to the all-consuming obsession and love for his art.
H.G. Mewis
#50. Like a true artist, never be satisfied that your writing cannot be improved.
Andrew McAleer
#51. If I was just to shut up, I wouldn't be a true artist.
ASAP Ferg
#53. I feel people are seeing me as a true artist rather than a singer, or an entertainer, or a girl who just makes songs.
Alessia Cara
#54. A true artist, in my mind, is willing to fail sometimes, because if you're not brave enough to say yes and follow your gut, it's never going to be good.
Alexander Skarsgard
#55. I think Damien Hirst is hilarious. And I think he's a true artist. He's not hilarious first; I think he is a real artist, and I also think he's got an amazing sense of humor.
Jemima Kirke
#56. A true artist would see his family starve, rather than work at anything other than his art.
Anonymous
#57. In movies, books & even music, to me, the true artist is the writer. Writers have to begin the creative process by making nothing into something before it can ever manifest into anything.
Chris Mentillo
#58. The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself.
Oscar Wilde
#59. The true artist does not create art as an end in itself; he creates art for human beings. Humanity is the goal.
Bronislaw Huberman
#60. The true gourmet, like the true artist, is one of the unhappiest creatures existent. His trouble comes from so seldom finding what he constantly seeks: perfection.
Ludwig Bemelmans
#61. The true artist and the sane collector never will tolerate insincerity and impudence.
Walter J. Phillips
#62. The true artist plays mad with his soul, labors at the very lip of the volcano, but remembers and clings to his purpose, which is as strong as the dream. He is not someone possessed, like Cassandra, but a passionate, easily tempted explorer who fully intends to get home again, like Odysseus.
John Gardner
#63. The true artist is one who can evoke those raw emotions in their audience, bring them to their knees, and convey their message to them in a foreign tongue. Or without words at all. That type of power is immeasurable.
S.L. Jennings
#64. There is a desperate tendency to try to legislate artists, to try to lay down rules for their obligations to society. Just leave artists alone. If you are a true artist, you will have a very finely tuned moral mechanism.
Athol Fugard
#65. If you practice for ten years, you may begin to please yourself, after 20 years you may become a performer and please the audience, after 30 years you may please even your guru, but you must practice for many more years before you finally become a true artist-then you may please even God.
Ali Akbar Khan
#67. Transforming leadership, [is defined as] leadership that builds on man's need for meaning, leadership that creates institutional purpose ... he is the value-shaper, the exemplar, the maker of meanings ... he is the true artist, the true pathfinder.
Tom Peters
#68. A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#69. The true artist doesn't substitute immorality for morality. On the contrary, he always substitutes a finer morality for a grosser one.
D.H. Lawrence
#70. Every mother should be a true artist, who knows how to weave into her child's life images of grace and beauty, the true poet capable of writing on the soul of childhood the harmony of love and truth, and teaching it how to produce the grandest of all poems - the poetry of a true and noble life.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
#71. I'd rather have people really be able to step back and get their money's worth and look at me as a true artist than somebody who is just regurgitating other material.
Haley Reinhart
#72. In every photographer there was a painter, a true artist, awaiting expression.
Pablo Picasso
#73. A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others.
Salvador Dali
#74. There is nothing more lonely than a true artist.
Tom Spanbauer
#75. A true priest is aware of the presence of the altar during every moment that he is conducting a service. It is exactly the same way that a true artist should react to the stage all the time he is in the theater. An actor who is incapable of this feeling will never be a true artist.
Constantin Stanislavski
#76. A true artist could and should create till the day they die. You don't ever fail as an artist until you quit being an artist.
Christian Keiber
#77. It's the difference between a true artist and everybody else." Claire sighed. "They can remake the world.
Janet Fitch
#78. All great stars are competitive. That's a sign of a true artist - if you don't have the fire of competition deep down inside, you're never going to achieve anything. You have to want to be king of the heap.
Camille Paglia
#79. To be a true artist, I have to be true to who I am now and write that way.
Brad Paisley
#80. A plagiarist steals from one person. A true artist steals from everybody.
Pablo Picasso
#81. Every true artist has been inspired more by the beauty of lines and color and the relationships between them than by the concrete subject of the picture.
Piet Mondrian
#82. Any true musician, true artist, knows that when they're in that point of total artistic creation, whether on stage or in the studio or writing or whatever, that's the closest moment [to creation]. And that's what keeps all these people addicted to getting back to that moment again.
Richard Ashcroft
#83. He was ... at peace with the world, for it is not in the praise of others that the true artist revels, but in the knowledge that he has satisfied himself.
Tom Holt
#85. Kenneth Hari is a true artist and in my opinion a psychic. When he is painting you, he feels your heart and soul.
Dolly Parton
#86. The true artist regards his work as a means of talking with men [and women], of saying his say to himself and to others. It is not a question of pay ...
Robert Henri
#87. Every true artist must, in his own way, be a magician, a charlatan.
Orson Welles
#88. Every true artist feels that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#89. Unlearning is the choice, conscious or unconscious, of any real artist. And it is the true sign of maturity.
Madeleine L'Engle
#90. The thing you can't underestimate is the true fan's intimacy. So Lady Gaga or anybody's true fan, I don't think they're going anywhere. There are people who are into commitment. If they're connecting with an artist, I think they'll be there over the long course.
Alanis Morissette
#91. Each person may see a fight in different ways ... They can see more to a primal way. Others they can see in a pure artistic way ... For me I see the pure artistic way, the way that a true martial artist can show his art.
Roger Gracie
#92. The painter who strives to represent reality must transcend his own perception. He must ignore or override the very mechanismsin his mInd that create objects out of images(symbols) ... The artist, like the eye, must provide true images and the clues of distance to tell his magic lies.
Colin Blakemore
#93. It's very true that an artist who networks well will have better opportunities than one who doesn't network well. But great networking skills without great art won't change art history.
Mark Kostabi
#94. The workman in the true sense of the word - the artist in guns - is either extinct, or hidden in an obscure corner. There is no individuality about modern guns. One is exactly like another.
Richard Jefferies
#95. Most true artists care about music as a pure, passionate art form, but can get caught in the trap of the business. Which, sadly, has now become more important than the artist or even the music itself.
Rosanna Arquette
#96. Don't listen to what anyone tells you about the kind of music you make. Just make it! Be yourself, make your own music, and be totally true to your art. Because it's kind of a selfish thing to be an artist.
Billy Sherwood
#97. A true martial artist, in my books anyways, is someone who is going to do the right thing and lead by example.
Duane Ludwig
#98. It is ridiculous to say that art has nothing to do with morality. What is true is that the artist's business is not that of the policeman.
George Bernard Shaw
#99. I wish I was as true an artist as you so that I could find a way to tell you what you've become to me. America, my love, you are sunlight falling through trees. You are laughter that breaks through sadness. You are the breeze on a too-warm day. You are clarity in the midst of confusion
Kiera Cass
#100. Don't be too dismissive of children. While it's true that few children are artists, all artists are children.
Ned Rorem
