Artist Quotes
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Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it 'creative observation.' Creative viewing.
William S. Burroughs
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I'm not God, but I'm working within my own means as an artist and a person, and I possibly have more power than God does, in whatever form he has, if he exists, because I can work without the overarching ambition of wanting to rule over everything. I can work just for the heck of it.
Raymond Pettibon
Black Flag
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There are all these different areas of specialization. That's it. You have to be a specialist nowadays. There's no other way. I was an artist for a long time, but I was always into being a general practitioner. I did a little of this and a little of that. And nothing got me anywhere. You have to specialize. If you don't specialize, it takes you until you're about fifty years old before anybody notices that you're doing anything at all.
Debbie Harry
Blondie
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It's difficult to really be an artist nowadays. People are just on another page. You have a society that needs you to say something, but they don't want to give you the environment to be able to be just a functioning, happy, normal person. It's like, the industry is at odds with you, the society is at odds with you. You start to live in this very confined box where it's like, It's "me" and "them."
Yasiin Bey
Black Star
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The first part of my career was indeed as a performer and recording artist, and I am still keenly involved with both. While rummaging around in the British Library, I found many delightful and interesting compositions by 18th-century men and women composers.
Barbara Harbach
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If you don't know the right people or have the right connections, you may never be discovered. With 'Opening Act,' we are democratizing a notoriously impossible process, pulling back the curtains on a consistently fascinating industry, and affording aspiring artists the chance of a lifetime.
Nigel Lythgoe
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I watched and learned about music as a member of Big Bang. Of course it's important to show my charms as an artist by showing my abilities but that's what our solo activities are for.
Lee Seung-hyun
Big Bang
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As an artist, I'm really inspired by everything around me - from travel and art, to friends and family, social voices in media and politics. I get a lot of inspiration from daily life.
Cara Santana
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If a man becomes more mature due to certain episodes in his life, it gives him the opportunity to look at life in a much more deep way. I believe the artist and the man work parallel, with the same feelings, the same soul, the same sensitivity.
Jose Carreras
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The artist is he who can take something ordinary and wring out of it attar of roses.
Walter Sickert
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Most of the photographs I make are personal pictures and never end up in print. Even the magazines I shoot for on assignment publish very few of the actual selects. Sometimes these personal pictures will end up in a book of my work. Oftentimes, however, they are simply photographs which I hope resonate, yet rarely find a publication home. I do a lot of personal work in Rio de Janeiro, and this of a parkour artist making a jump on Ipanema Beach is such a moment.
David Alan Harvey
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To be an artist, you're basically a crazy person. You're extremely narcissistic and emotionally expressive. The idea that the world needs to listen to you is an insane thought.
Chloe Wise
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If there are political programs on TV, yet it takes an artist to actually energize political debate, that tells you something really quite frightening about the level of the political debate happening on mainstream channels - right-wing-biased mothers.
Thomas Edward Yorke
Atoms for Peace
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I have a lot of compact discs. I need them for radio play and convenience. Many bands and artists I am a fan of don't always release their work on vinyl, so I take what they feel like giving me.
Henry Rollins
Black Flag
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An artist feels vulnerable to begin with; and yet the only answer is to recklessly discard more armour.
Eric Maisel
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For me the journey of making a film is a journey of discovery as to what that film is. I mean what I do is what other artists do, painters, novelists, people that make music, poets, sculptors, you name it. It's about starting out and working with the material and discovering through making, working with the material the artifact.
Mike Leigh
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Working as a solo artist has given me a confidence that I didn't have with Blondie.
Debbie Harry
Blondie
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I'm not into makeup or dresses or typically girly things. But to me, those things don't really define what it is to be a female artist in this industry any more. It's being brave and courageous and true to yourself.
Tones and I
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We were all born, and we all came to the music business with everything we had. Some of us just don't get a chance. Now there's a lot of other people like myself, indeed, who are getting heard worldwide. That gives other artists a chance.
Erykah Badu
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...why did Plato say that poets should be chased out of the republic? Precisely because every poet and every artist is an antisocial being. He's not that way because he wants to be; he can't be any other way.... and if he really is an artist it is in his nature not to want to be admitted, because if he is admitted it can only mean he is doing something which is understood, approved, and therefore old hat - worthless. Anything new, anything worth doing, can't be recognized.
Pablo Picasso
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“I think the worst reaction that I could get from someone to my photos is some sort of mediocre, middle-range reaction where they really get nothing from it, and they want to move on to the next thing. I'd rather they be horrified, pissed off at me, extremely disgusted at how bad of an artist I am.”
Alex Prager
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If I had the capabilities of being something other than I am, I would. It's no fun being an artist. You know what it's like, writing, it's torture.
John Lennon
The Beatles
