Artist Quotes
For the mystic what is how. For the craftsman how is what. For the artist what and how are one.
William McElcheran
My priciple is, the artist shall put forth, humbly & lovingly, without bitterness, the very best & highest that is within him,utterly regardless of contemporary criticism.
Sidney Lanier
One thing that's important to point out is that this kind of populism has a long and mixed history. It's part of this tradition of problematic anti-elitism where the elites are always the liberal class - the intellectuals, the professors, the artists - and not the economic elites. Why are we so mad and aggrieved at newspaper editors but not at corporate executives? I think we need to look more at the latter, at economic elites.
Astra Taylor
If you want to be an artist, you have to know that art is an ongoing practice, that you're part of a long line. Take this test: if someone offered you a billion dollars, but you could never draw another illustration or write another word, would you take it? If you reject it, you need to find another way to pay the bills, but you're still an artist.
Nicole J. Georges
The first thing you do when you sit down at the computer: If you're an artist, a leader or someone seeking to make a difference, the first thing you do should be to lay tracks to accomplish your goals, not to hear how others have reacted/ responded/ insisted to what happened yesterday.
Seth Godin
All artists need a room of their own
Virginia Woolf
The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal.
Elia Kazan
Let me see: art and activism. I can always fall back on, "the question should be, what isn't political? Everything you do is political, even if it's abstract. You're making a political statement even if it's unwittingly." I think so much of art is unconscious anyway, the artist doesn't know the real reason they're doing it. They're just kind of going along with it intuitively.
Eric Drooker
When I was asked if I wanted to perform on the Grand Ole Opry, I yelled, 'Are you kidding me?' I've been waiting for that my whole life. To be invited where so many of the greatest country artists have performed is an honor, and I still can't believe it has been bestowed on me. Just to stand in the circle where so many greats have stood-Hank Williams, Kitty Wells, I just couldn't believe it.
Darius Rucker
Hootie & the Blowfish
The artist should fear to become the slave of detail.
Albert Pinkham Ryder
Drew Friedman isn't just a brilliant artist. He takes you to a place. He takes you back in time. He makes you smell the stale cigarettes and cold brisket and you say, thank you for the pleasure.
Sarah Silverman
It's so crazy because kids that wrote to me when they were 14 years old are still in my life. A lot have gone on to become musicians and artists in their own right who inspire me now.
Kathleen Hanna
Bikini Kill
Mother-love is not inevitable. The good mother is a great artist ever creating beauty out of chaos.
Alice Randall
I went to an art high school in Washington D.C., and I majored in visual art. When I started there, I was horrible - couldn't draw, couldn't sketch, couldn't do anything. I remember at one point I came to terms with the fact that I had to work my ass off to do well and that's exactly what I did. I drew and drew and drew, and it worked - I ended up getting the award for best artist and went on to apply to design school because I loved it so much. I think it really speaks to the idea that you can in fact excel at whatever you put your mind and your heart to.
Njena Surae Jarvis
The public wants to understand and learn in a single day, a single minute, what the artist has spent years learning.
Paul Gauguin
I don't understand the fashion industry and the appeal of it. I understand that there are some people who think it's important to them, and they're designers, they're artists, but there seems to be a disproportionate amount of our culture that's caught up in that and the red carpet stuff. It seems like there's a disproportionate amount of attention placed on that.
Jim Gaffigan
I did The Fifth Element and Jean-Claude Mezieres, the artist of Valerian; he was working on Fifth Element. And he's actually the one who say, why don't you do Valerian? And I said because we can't make it. And you really have to wait for Avatar and to suddenly think oh okay, maybe we can think of it. But before Avatar, just forget it.
Luc Besson
I'm really an artist of feeling. I like creating things when it feels right.
Will Ferrell
I'm really happy that people are starting to hear my band, and we are so happy to be conduits for all this other happiness, and this emotional response. So, I can't be like, "that doesn't matter to me, I'm an artist, I exist apart from that!" But on the other hand, if you buy into that too much, you're setting yourself up... if I start thinking, "well, people at the show really liked one song, maybe I should write more songs like that," then I'm in trouble.
Carey Mercer
Being an artist is dragging your innermost feelings out, giving a piece of yourself, no matter in which art form, in which medium.
Henry Rollins
Black Flag
All art is the result of one’s having been in danger of having gone through an experience all the way to the end when no one can go any further. This is what it is like to be an artist – you are unsteady on the edge of life like a swan before an anxious launching of himself on the floods where he is gently caught.
Edmund de Waal
The concern of the artist is with the discrepancy between physical fact and psychological effect.
Josef Albers
