Artists Quotes

“To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life.

(Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935)”
― Dorothy L Sayers, The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist

“It's 4am again and I'm just getting started. People are boring and I want to burn with excitement or anger and bleed, bleed through my words. I want to get all fucked up and write real and raw and ugly and beautifully. I bet you're sleeping safe and calm, and you can stay there, it's safer there, and you wouldn't stand one night on this journey my mind wanders off to every night you close your eyes. I'll stay here one day and I will never come down.
I promise I can fly before I hit the ground.
It doesn't even hurt anymore.
I swear, it doesn't hurt.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps

“Well, Daddy, I used to believe that artists went crazy in the process of creating the beautiful works of art that kept society sane. Nowadays, though, artists make intentionally ugly art that’s only supposed to reflect society rather than inspire it. So I guess we’re all loony together now, loony rats in the shithouse of commercialism.”
― Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

“No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.”
― Edward Hopper

“There has to be a cut-off somewhere between the freedom of expression and a graphically explicit free-for-all.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

“Possible reality [is obtained] by slightly bending physical and chemical laws.”
― Marcel Duchamp

“I feel as though whenever I create something, my Mr. Hyde wakes up in the middle of the night and starts thrashing it. I sometimes love it the next morning, but other times it is an abomination.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“If you participate in life, you don’t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too much. The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature. All the misfortunes Providence inflicts on him come from his stubborness in denying that maxim.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails”
― James Joyce

“I love you, Lucien, but I am a muse, you are an artist, I am not here to make you comfortable.”
― Christopher Moore, Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d'Art

“From recovery to rags and rags to recovery symbolizes art - a perfect compilation of human imperfections.”
― Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile

“It’s a shame how much artists have to bleed for people to enjoy their work.”
― Solange nicole

“You never needed wings to fly,
You only needed love.”
― Jenim Dibie, The Calligraphy of God: A Collection of Love Poems

“He’s a pagan! I’m an artist! We’re naturally sympathetic!”
― Sidney Howard

“It is possible, however, that the artist is both thin-skinned and prophetic and, like the canary lowered into the mine shaft to test the air, has caught a whiff of something lethal.”
― Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

“We can never be entirely original, as artists or as people. The genius and vision of those who came before us is too great for us to digress from entirely. Though, as creatures that are compelled to test and surpass our own creative abilities, we must always strive for that originality in everything we do in order to move the world forward.”
― Jessica Lave

“I've been told my old city possesses a 'thriving arts scene,' whatever that is; personally, I think artists should lie low and stick to their work, not line-dance through the parks.”
― Walter Kirn, Up in the Air

“Writing is the only art form where a good number of the artists make a slice of their living criticizing one another in print, in public. ”
― Christian Bauman

“In the case of Michel Angelo we have an artist who with brush and chisel portrayed literally thousands of human forms; but with this peculiarity, that while scores and scores of his male figures are obviously suffused and inspired by a romantic sentiment, there is hardly one of his female figures that is so,—the latter being mostly representative of woman in her part as mother, or sufferer, or prophetess or poetess, or in old age, or in any aspect of strength or tenderness, except that which associates itself especially with romantic love. Yet the cleanliness and dignity of Michel Angelo's male figures are incontestable, and bear striking witness to that nobility of the sentiment in him, which we have already seen illustrated in his sonnets.”
― Edward Carpenter, The Intermediate Sex: A Study Of Some Transitional Types Of Men And Women

“Although the art world reveres the unconventional, it is rife with conformity. Artists make work that "looks like art" and behave in ways that enhance stereotypes. Curators pander to the expectations of their peers and their museum boards. Collectors run in herds to buy work by a handful of fashionable painters. Critics stick their finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing so as to "get it right". Originality is not always rewarded, but some people take real risks and innovate, which gives a raison d'être to the rest.”
― Sarah Thornton, Seven Days in the Art World

“Often the inspiration to write music comes from the voices in your head. You’re not crazy. Just be thankful they are not making you rescue people in 20-degree weather at 2:30 in the morning in the forest.”
― Shannon Alder

“Art isn't only a painting; it's anything that changes someone for the better, any nonanonymous interaction that leads to a human (not simply a commercial) conclusion.”
― Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

“After all, Paul Robeson said, ‘Artists are the radical voice of civilization.’ Each and every one of you in this room, with your gifts and your power and your skills, could perhaps change the way in which our global humanity mistrusts itself. Perhaps we as artists and as visionaries, for what’s better in the human heart and the human soul, could influence citizens everywhere in the world to see the better side of who and what we are as a species.”
― Harry Belafonte

“...and as far as talent is concerned, there will be such an excess that our artists will become their own audiences, and audiences made up of ordinary people will no longer exist.”
― Hermann Hesse

“Lucien, women are wondrous, mysterious, and magical creatures, who should be treated not only with respect but with reverence, perhaps even awe. Now go sweep the steps.”
― Christopher Moore

“Writers and artists know that ethereal moment, when just one, fleeting something--a chill, an echo, the click of a lamp, a question—-ignites the flame of an entire work that blazes suddenly into consciousness.”
― Nadine C. Keels

“Performers try harder.”
― David Byrne, How Music Works

“Time and death: It's the ultimate vision of an artist at the end of everything. It's just what's there. It was not something I planned to do.”
― Don DeLillo

“He's been living on the fringes of art for so many years, talking and talking about it, that he's come to expect all the prerogatives of being an artist without ever doing the work. I mean he's an art bum...”
― Richard Yates

“Every great phenomenon is followed by degeneration, particularly in the realm of art. The model of the great man stimulates vainer natures to imitate him outwardly or to surpass him; in addition, all great talents have the fateful quality of stifling many weaker forces and needs, and seem to devastate the nature around them. The most fortunate instance in the development of art is when several geniuses reciprocally keep each other in check; in this kind of a struggle, weaker and gentle natures are generally also allowed air and light.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits