David Hammons Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I have been known as the minimal and conceptual artist for over five decades. I think I haven't changed much.
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I hope to do multiple characters throughout my life that are separate from me. I think it's a cop-out if you play yourself in everything.
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Being a press secretary is like learning to type: You're hunting and pecking for a while and then you find yourself doing the touch system and don't realize it. You're speaking for the president without ever having to go to him.
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The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.
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As a hip-hop artist who likes fashion, who can't help but notice people like Kanye West, Tiger, Big Sean and definitely T.I.P. These guys really understand how to be progressive and fashion forward.
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I just like to explore all sorts of different forms - no, 'explore' is not even the word - enjoy. You don't want to limit yourself to a particular form.
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In a city, there's more room to be, where in a small town, you have to squish yourself down a little bit. And it's exciting for me to be pursuing a career where I don't have to be small.
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Just as theater has to be where people live, actors have to go out in the marketplace - not be cut off by a lens. Either an artist grows or he stagnates.
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A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.
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I don't believe you should make fun of anyone but yourself.
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I don't believe you can get into somebody's character but more that somebody comes in you. You just use yourself. In everything I play, I feel like it is me. I just say different things on different times and look different.
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When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself.
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People make me key chains... someone attached a Dauntless symbol to a silver pen. That one is what I use to sign books. I use that a lot. I like to keep them around because they remind me that people are waiting for these books and that they really love them. It gives me motivation in those times when I'm not feeling very motivated.
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Write a story a great writer would write. Because part of becoming an artist is pushing through all the disbelief of those around you, deciding that you are a writer when you have no idea what a plot is or whether what you've written is any good, or anything.
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It might crush a lot of people, but I've never been in the room with an artist that I've written a song for.
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Apart from hard work and being in the right projects, you need to re-invent yourself. I'd be bored doing the same thing over and over, and the audience wouldn't like it, too. The trick is to break that monotony.
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Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people - the beauty within themselves.
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When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it.
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My graffiti really comes more from a May '68, sort of Situationist vibe than the hip-hop world. I think a real graffiti artist would find me a poser.
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I chose 'The Voice' because I knew they had a lot more respect for each artist, as opposed to the other shows. They don't get it. I don't think those shows ever got it. I was turned off by some of the other shows and how they did things.
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With the death of bin Laden, it's finally time for Congress to bring back the pre-9-11 legal norm, before we decided it was okay to toss out our civil liberties if the 'bad guys' were scary enough.
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When I work with filmmakers today, I'm really an advocate for the women's roles that I see, to make them as layered and as deep as possible. I think many of them are underwritten.
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As an artist, you have to keep reinventing yourself.
