c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
This is the world of pretend. We are artists and we are servants of the stage, and I take both jobs very seriously. As artists, we work as a collective—all for one and one for all. As servants, we work for thos who venture out alone, otherwise known as performers.
— Rebecca Stead, Goodbye Stranger
[Epilepsy] gave her an adversity to fight against. It had shaped her personality, the need to be careful and secretive, and the ability to see things a bit differently from the neurotypical. She granted that this feeling of having a broken brain that required her to be sensitive, to look always inward to survive, might be why she turned artist.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Flies to Wanton Boys
When I use the word rebel for the artist, I do not refer to revolutionary or to such things as taking over the dean’s office; that is a different matter. Artists are generally soft-spoken persons who are concerned with their inner visions and images. But that is precisely what makes them feared by any coercive society. For they are the bearers of the human being’s age-old capacity to be insurgent.
— Rollo May, The Courage to Create
To capture someones light is to seal a moment in time of their soul. trapping it within a pane of glass.. forever suspended in time
— Kurt Grüng
Oh say can you see Alma. The darlingof Them. All her friends were artists.They alone have memories. They alonelove flowers. They alone give partiesand die. Poor Alma. They alone.She died,and it was as if all the jewels in the worldhad heaved a sigh. The seismographat Fordham university registered, for once,a spiritual note. How like a sliverin her own short fat muscular foot.She loved the Western World, thoughthere are some who say she isn't really dead.
— Frank O'Hara, Lunch Poems
Vermeer's skill was in combining few colors, mixing little and using layers of lakes and varnishes to build up the illusion of life
— Frank Wynne, I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century's Greatest Forger
An artist must paint not simply surface light but what is inside, what he sees within his subject
— Frank Wynne, I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century's Greatest Forger
An artist must paint not simply surface light, but what is inside, what he sees within his subject
— Frank Wynne, I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century's Greatest Forger
Normal is not a part of my vocabulary. I am an artist after all.
— Paul S. Lynch
You are the artist, and your days the canvas. Will you create an original masterpiece, or live a paint-by-numbers kind of life?
— John Mark Green
It's not what you look at that matters, It's what you see
— Alphonso Dunn, Pen & Ink Drawing: A Simple Guide
I was surfing the Internet for a different sort of education. I surfed for photos of circus freaks and synonyms for the word intercourse and for answers to why staring at the stars in the evening tore my heart with longing.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver
There’s nothing that makes an artist more beloved than the audience pitying him because his work comes at a price they would never pay.
— Rafael Yglesias, The Wisdom of Perversity
Every time it’s the same. It’s easy to prove to myself that good pictures are elusive, but I can never quite believe they’re also inevitable. It would be a lot easier for me to believe they were if I also believed that they came as a result of my obvious talent, that I was extraordinary in some way. Artists go out of their way to reinforce the perception that good art is made by singular people, people with an exceptional gift. But I don’t believe I am that exceptional, so what is this that I’m making?
— Sally Mann
We are all born artists. The nature generally doesn’t discriminate among newborns with respect to art. Yet most of us try very hard as we grow, without knowing, to stop being artists.
— Pawan Mishra
... but as he no longer stands on his native soil, his art can't possibly have roots. An artist creates true art for his people only as long as he lives, and suffers, among them.
— Olga Grushin, The Line
To be an artist includes much
—  one must possess many gifts--absolute gifts--which have not been acquired by one's own effort.
Artists show us what we blind to.”Baris Gencel
— Baris Gencel
I get the sense that some people think that influence dilutes – that the more you are someone else, the less you are yourself, as if you were born with some innate distinct youness that is gradually sanded away by the corroding forces of conformity. That if you could somehow tune everything else out and really dig deep within yourself, you’d find your voice there, pure and independent.That’s bullshit. Your voice isn’t there, already made. You need to make your own voice. You need to make your own voice.
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg
Fast food, fast money, shallow thinking, shallow interpretations. This is now what I deal with everyday. Art was meant to be about freedom, about having the courage to explore what it means to be human.
— Emma Raveling, Breaking Measures
There are two types of people in this world: Those who make it their life's work to rid themselves of all pain and suffering... and Artists.
— Gregor Collins
And the eye became a body, the murky heart of a rose. The sinister shadow of an orchid. Or the indolent poppy balanced behind the ear of Baudelaire.
— Patti Smith, The Coral Sea
A piece of art is part of its creator, you cannot split them apart. You cannot like one and dislike another.
— Sameh Elsayed
If what makes a person an artist is their work, they should be admired; if what makes a person an artist is themselves, they should be adored.
— Gregor Collins, The Accidental Caregiver: How I Met, Loved, and Lost Legendary Holocaust Refugee Maria Altmann
Its not the type of pencil but the artist's skill that matters.
— Srinivas Shenoy
I think Livingston was going to steal a kiss in the moonlight."	Lily wrinkled her nose. "Well, I certainly wouldn't have given him one. He made me too uncomfortable, and I just met him!"	Tyler cupped her face with his hands, leaning closer. "What about me?" he said, his voice low. "Will you give one to me?"	"I shouldn't." The lonely years stretched ahead of her. Her earlier vow to make memories rose and suddenly she was desperate for some kisses of Tyler's to remember. In answer to his question, she tilted her mouth to his.
— Debra Holland, Painted Montana Sky
I've been thanking God for you being there. For you risking your life for Dove. I'll never forget it, Tyler. I'll never forget you...."	"Truth is, Lily, I'll never forget you either.
— Debra Holland, Painted Montana Sky
Her thoughts drifted to Tyler Dunn... to the feeling of being held in his arms. Wistfulness curled through her heart and she wished for the freedom to enjoy the attention of a man... to indulge in a lady-like flirtation... to fall in love. Although the wishes weren't new, for the first time, she had someone to weave the fantasy around. She could easily paint a romantic dream of living here with Tyler. But, Lily knew that dreaming about such a life would only make it harder to live with her reality. Yet, she couldn't help imagining him in the pool like this, naked as a newborn babe, yet all man.
— Debra Holland, Painted Montana Sky
I paint the stuff I see when my eyes are closed
— Anna Asche
To become an artist you have to be curious.
— Leonardo da Vinci
There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another.
— Edouard Manet
They say everything looks better with odd numbers of things. But sometimes I put even numbers—just to upset the critics.
— Bob Ross
Everyone loves a dead artist. It’s the living ones that people can’t tolerate.
— Christopher Bollen, Orient
Take on the challenge and find inspiration in the process.
— Stefan Baumann
For the artisan, craft is an end in itself. For you, the artist, craft is the vehicle for expressing your vision. Craft is the visible edge of art.
— David Bayles, Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
Certainly a painting can be reductionistically described by its physical properties only: its shape, the paint, the design, and so forth. But every artwork that exists is both an individual thing, a whole unto itself, and simultaneously a part of the matrix of forces that brought it into being.
— Alex Grey, The Mission of Art
If her artist's eye had given her nothing else, it taught her to see beauty where few others noticed it.
— Elizabeth Camden, The Rose of Winslow Street
You must make love to him like his touch is your salvation.
— Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving
If you have one person you’re influenced by, everyone will say you’re the next whoever. But if you rip off a hundred people, everyone will say you're so original.
— Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
Like many people who dress in black, the lump of coal was interested in becoming an artist.
— Lemony Snicket, The Lump of Coal
Be an artist in everything you do.
— Debasish Mridha
You sought to preserve your creative instincts and what would nourish them. But neurosis itself does not nourish the artist, you know; he creates in spite of it, out of anything, any material given to him. The torments and hells of [crazy men], are not for you.
— Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
You must be Independent, Independent, Independent - don't talk so much but do more - go your own way and let your neighbour go his... Shake off all the props - the props tradition and authority give you - and go alone - crawl - stumble - stagger - but go alone.
— Charles Rennie Mackintosh
The present is only faced in any generation by the artist.
— Marshall McLuhan
It takes an athlete to dance, but an artist to be a dancer
— Shanna LaFleur
The glory that is given to God by the works of his creation is what we call an “external glory.” It is something outside of God. It doesn’t actually add anything to God. It is very much like an artist who has a great talent for painting and a mind full of beautiful images. If the artist puts some of those images on canvas for people to look at and admire, it still hasn’t added anything to the artist himself. It hasn’t made him any better or more wonderful than he was before (p. 5).
— Leo J. Trese
Design is an art, creative artist must have a beautiful mind
— Bhupesh B. Patil
It takes an artist…. to be an artist
— Sameh Elsayed
The artist can not serve his struggle for freedom unless he subjectively assimilates the social content, unless he feels in his very nerves its meaning and drama and freely seeks to give his own inner world incarnation in his art.
— Leon Trotsky
My brain is already scrambled enough.”“Cracked,” I said, not thinking.“Yeah.” Moses scowled.“Well, it’s working for you.” I turned and looked at my walls. “Cracks and all. In fact, if your brain wasn’t cracked, none of the brilliance could spill out. Do you realize that?
— Amy Harmon, The Law of Moses
When you see a fish you don't think of its scales, do you? You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water. Well, I've tried to express just that. If I made fins and eyes and scales, I would arrest its movement, give a pattern or shape of reality. I want just the flash of its spirits.
— Constantin Brancusi
Nobody should ever receive more money for a work of art than the artist who produced it.
— Pansy Schneider-Horst
I appreciate a book intended to be judged by its cover. The insincere readers are often weeded out while the sincere readers remain curious.
— Criss Jami, Healology
The artist must be blind to "recognized" and "unrecognized" form, deaf to the teachings and desires of his time. His open eyes must be directed to his inner life and his ears must be constantly attuned to the voice of inner necessity.
— Wassily Kandinsky
I learned that I' have to be detached if I was ever to achieve anything at all.
— Iain Pears
You have to have time to be sorry for yourself to be a good Abstract Expressionist.
— Robert Rauschenberg
Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract.
— Richard Diebenkorn
To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter. To abstract in art is to separate certain fundamentals from irrelevant material which surrounds them.
— Ben Shahn
If an artist is not only he who sings or paints, but he who express himself by words or drawing then I can consider myself as one.
— Amen Muffler
If an artist is not only he who sings or paints, but he whow express himself by words or illustrations then I can consider myself as one.
— Amen Muffler
Having Simultanagnosia (object blindness), Prosopagnosia (face blindness) and Semantic Agnosia (meaning blindness) goes in my favour with regards to abstract art living in world full of fragmented pieces when I draw it is in real time no visual memory means no "pre-formatted" picture in my mind so I go where my hand takes it's like journey that is happening in the moment, hence why I drew these without my lenses on. When I was younger I would draw pictures by "route" which made it a appear that I had a visual memory (cobbling together things out of context and making a contextual image)
— Paul Isaacs
Is the phrase 'pay' or 'play the piper'I inquire, why'Cause I admire a desire to flip the switchYeah make a way to face the music likeLife savings for a mosh pit riotListen to a mixRock the tickets, higher volumeVelocity which shakes a cockpit's pilot
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
That's all I wanted to do as a kid. Play a guitar properly and jump around. But too many people got in the way.
— Syd Barrett
I'm full of dust and guitars...
— Syd Barrett
When I think of the wisest people I know, they share one defining trait: curiosity. They turn away from the minutiae of their lives-and focus on the world around them. They are motivated by the desire to explore the unfamiliar. They are drawn toward what they don't understand.
— Dani Shapiro, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another…and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.”—
— Leonard Bernstein
The artist is the only one qualified to criticize his art, because only the artist knows what he was trying to express and how satisfied he is with the attempt.
— Ron Brackin
Not everyone with a painting brush is an artist, likewise not everyone with a camera is a photographer 
— Ewlyn Fernando
Some things are so silly they have a certain brilliance to them. Other things, set as standards for brilliance and therefore exalted by many who don't know why, become tarnished because of it.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Well, I'm a painter, I was trained as a painter…I seem to have spent a little less time painting than I might've done…But it didn't transcend the feeling of playing at UFO and those sort of places with the lights and that, the fact that the group was getting bigger and bigger.
— Syd Barrett
In the act of creation, as in all the arts, the soul should be felt in the face and the fingers and the tongue, even in the cavities.
— Chris Campanioni, In Conversation
And still, still, there is more to describe- we paint because drawing breath is an agony and exhaling an ecstasy and somewhere in the space in-between 	 we think we once found a truth; and the eternal part of us desires  to share this truth at all costsonly it's never quite how we pictured it,  and it's never quite received the way we wantand the paint drips with our own blood the handles of our brushes are our own bonesour own tears become the words to our most beautiful love songs and we know we'll never get it right before we die-getting up every morning and facing our own limited truth is a courage so divine  most men quell and women stay enslaved in silence.
— Marie Anzalone, A Pilgrimage in Epistles: Pems as Letters and Observations
I once had a drinking contest with an artist on his yacht... It amused him as I took shot after shot, and I realized that this was the reason he'd invited us, his amusement. Looking back, I thought he didn't expect we'd have anything to say, that my questions about the artist's purpose, his existential quest for self in a communally-brutalized past, were not as amusing as they were thought-provoking, but I'll never know. As I swayed like a sailor in drunken bitterness, I felt something had been sacrificed to his art. He'd gone so far out on that boat there was no way for him to come back. I felt he no longer existed and was just the faded intention of color on canvas. His humanity had surely been washed away with the paint thinner.
— Megan Rich, Six Years of A Floating Life: A Memoir
Anything can be art: painting stairs, raising a child, or organising a trip to the end of the world. It's the way you live that makes you either an artist, or an art connoisseur, or an unsatisfied critic.
— Mykyta Isagulov
..it has always been so much my desire to paint for those who don’t know the artistic side of a painting.
— Vincent van Gogh
A creator is not in advance of his generation but he is the first of his contemporaries to be conscious of what is happening to his generation.
— Gertrude Stein, Picasso
At the dressing table, every woman has a chance to be an artist, and art, as Aristotle said, "completes what nature left unfinished.
— Sophia Loren, Women & Beauty
The greatest artist and web-designer ever is indeed a spider!
— Munia Khan
Every artist is a man who has freed himself from his family, his nation, his race. Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a ‘universal’ without patriotism, without home, who has found his people everywhere.
— Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev
Women, the most beautiful things in the world,” answers the model. As if it’s the only thing worth painting, as if everyone should aspire to it. Normally coming from a guy that answer would sound so incredibly skeezy—a greasy, obvious pick-up line. But something about this guy’s earnest tone tells me he means it." -from Model Position by Kitsy Clare
— Kitsy Clare, Model Position
An artist has got to get acquainted with himself just as much as he can. It is no easy job, for it is not a present-day habit of humanity.
— Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev
I cannot explain, nor must an artist defend his work or elucidate in such a way the reeling audience can fathom, brutes that they are.
— Laird Barron, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories
Choosing to be an artist . . . is choosing to mine deep caverns. It's like getting lost in the darkness and spending the rest of your life trying to find your way.
— Michele Zackheim, Broken Colors
Houses, housetops, like human beings have wonderful character. The lives of housetops. The wear of the seasons. The country is beautiful, young, growing things. The majesty of trees. The backs of tenement houses are living documents.
— Robert Henri, The Art Spirit: Notes, Articles, Fragments of Letters and Talks to Students, Bearing on the Concept and Technique of Picture Making, the Study of Art
Cubism is a Cathedral of shit.
— Francis Picabia
Don't be an artist. Be somebody's artist.
— zev rector
Sometimes being hotheaded and doing it your own way and walking out on all the hot shit might be the right thing to do.
— Porochista Khakpour
I think he is the ornament of society! Oh, there is not just one role for the artist in society. He has many roles and he has a different role as society changes, and in different societies . . . He can be a seer at times, and in the eighteenth century he was the satirist, the artist stepping back and holding up the mirror to society. Moreover, I don’t think the same kind of person is necessarily an artist or a poet in one century as another.
— Peter Taylor
In my experience, what every true artist wants, really wants, is to be paid.
— Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
As an artist suffering from insomnia and working from my apartment, I had an artistic freedom to explore and create awesome stuff. I wore a robe and slippers as my work dress code. These are the days when creativity is my best imaginary friend. And I was crazy enough to create what people would call masterpieces.
— Shawn Lukas
Fine art is the discipline of breaking rules.
— M.B. Dallocchio
I can create my imagination because i am an Artist.!
— Manish Suthar
Art is a journey of excellence not a goal of perfection.
— Jacqueline Patricks
I notice I may have somehow mixed up two events, my visit with Rita to Briceland on our way to Cantrip, and our passing through Briceland again on our way back to New York, but such suffusions of swimming colors are not to be disdained by the artist in recollection.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Being an artist isn’t a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It’s an attitude we can all adopt. It’s a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things, you’re an artist.
— Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?
She had picked the spot the day before and carried out a stool low enough to sit on and still have her paintbox and her water cup within reach. Anna didn't use an easel. Easels seemed to her an altogether too assertive aid, too obvious. She liked to work as unobtrusively as possible, the paper spread on a board in her lap, close to her hand.
— Tove Jansson, The True Deceiver
Once an artist painted on a huge canvas - the skies;The sun, the landscapes and everything that was nice.To complete the masterpiece into the frame He came-And that is how, You, I and all life on earth became.The same God that performed this miraculous feat,One can reach by closing eyes and feeling his heart beat.
— Sushrut A. Badhe
In many times, after creating a piece of work I want to stand up and applaud.
— Shawn Lukas
Collage is the twentieth century's greatest innovation
— Robert Motherwell
i can create my imagination coz i am because Artist.!
— Manish Suthar
I had spent many years living with a plain piece of canvas just right on my face as a headboard for my bed. As the years passed by, I watched it slowly transforming into a work of art which still lives above my head. And that my friend, is truly living art.
— Shawn Lukas
To speak of these things and to try to understand their nature and, having understood it, to try slowly and humbly and constantly to express, to press out again, from the gross earth or what it brings forth, from sound and shape and colour which are the prison gates of our soul, an image of the beauty we have come to understand—that is art.
— James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Every piece of art is a mirror and serves the function of reflectivity to expose to you and reveal to you more of who you are.
— Darryl Anka
A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle.
— Robert Henri, The Art Spirit: Notes, Articles, Fragments of Letters and Talks to Students, Bearing on the Concept and Technique of Picture Making, the Study of Art
There is something deeply satisfying in shaping something with your hands. Proper artificing is like a song made solid. It is an act of creation.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
My hands are flowing like sunlight. The shapes and colors are astounding. I don't understand these images that are empowering me. My brush touches the canvas like photons to the earth, and a new world develops, free from my control, yet intrinsically dependent upon me. I am sweating with elation. I have no idea what I am doing, or what it is my hands are trying to see. There is so much strength in this clarity I am overpowered by the independence of it.
— Daniel J. Rice, This Side of a Wilderness
True artists unburden their envies and work toward encouraging amateurs.
— Aniruddha Sastikar
To fornicate is to aspire to enter into another
—  the artist never emerges from himself.
I should ask if it was good for you," Miles murmured, "but given that evidently you acquired the answer to life, the universe, and everything, it must have been-excuse the word-cosmic.
— Rowan Speedwell, Illumination
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 sacred human consciousness.
— J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
How did Adam do it? He seemed to be able to look past Miles's weirdness and insecurities and awkwardness to see Miles, himself, what he was-whatever he was-inside.
— Rowan Speedwell, Illumination
Kids are real artists. They’d rather paint the outside of the box than being stuck inside.
— Shawn Lukas
Behind every work of art lies the enormous pretension of exhibiting one's vision of the world. If such obvious arrogance is not counterbalanced by the tribulations of doubt, all that remains is a monster who is to art what a fanatic is to faith.
— Amélie Nothomb, Life Form
As a kid I never knew what I wanted to be when I grow up, but the only thing I knew was that I wanted to create things. And then I wanted to be an astronaut. I would paint stars and the atmosphere and then frame and hang the universe up on my bedroom wall. A few years down the line while I was still stargazing, I came to realize that I’m halfway around the world chasing something and the whole time it’s in my backyard. From the very beginning I was who I always wanted to be.
— Shawn Lukas
A paint brush is the only tool I use extensively in my works, to push paint on canvas and conduct melodies. And that's exactly what Garden Avenue is, and all of my projects after that.
— Shawn Lukas
Every world needed an artist.
— Stephen Baxter, Proxima
For me, a paint brush is the only tool I use extensively in my works, to push paint on canvas and conduct melodies. And that's exactly what Garden Avenue is, and all of my projects after that.
— Shawn Lukas
Now relax, think positively and begin --- the smile of success awaits you.
— Claudia Nice, First Steps Drawing in Pen & Ink
Protect the ears of your heart, rather than being drawn in each day like the fading tides that dance daily with the moon.
— Eric Samuel Timm, Static Jedi: The Art of Hearing God Through the Noise
Nude paintings and sculptures are called "art" only in the museums..Outside of the museums, It is "Absurdity" and "Vulgarity".To respect your own creative talent and the prosperity of your "art", let only the Gurus critique, suggest and guide you; don't let your work be affected by others' choices and understandings.
— Himmilicious
Artist is not human, but humanity.
— Raheel Farooq
Every artist needs canvass, mine just happens to be Microsoft Word and a Thesaurus.
— Lori Lesko
Artists are never poor, they just don't get enough time to make money !
— Brahmananda Patra
Van Gogh on his brother's upcoming marriage: "It’s because he’s in Holland, where he’s getting married one of these days. Now, while not denying the advantages of a marriage in the very least, once it has been done and one is quietly set up in one’s home, the funereal pomp of the reception &c., the lamentable congratulations of two families (even civilized) at the same time, not to mention the fortuitous appearances in those pharmacist’s jars where antediluvian civil or religious magistrates sit – my word – isn’t there good reason to pity the poor unfortunate obliged to present himself armed with the requisite papers in the places where, with a ferocity unequalled by the cruellest cannibals, you’re married alive on the low heat of the aforementioned funereal receptions.
— Liesbeth Heenk, The 1-Hour Van Gogh Book
The thing about being an artist," Dad said, folding his newspaper and setting it down on the table, "is that there are always going to be people who want to stop you from doing your art. But this usually says more about them and their issues than it does about you and your art. Trust me.
— Leila Sales, This Song Will Save Your Life
Clearly the hardest thing for the working artist is to create his own conception and follow it, unafraid of the strictures it imposes, however rigid these may be... I see it as the clearest evidence of genius when an artist follows his conception, his idea, his principle, so unswervingly that he has this truth of his constantly in his control, never letting go of it even for the sake of his own enjoyment of his work.
— Andrei Tarkovsky
You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse...go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to, the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him non-existent
— Oscar Wilde
Wasn't the whole point of being an artist, or at least part of it, that you didn't have to wear a tie?
— Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings
Artist paint images unseen, musicians create sounds that emerge from silence, and authors write from a synthetic point of view about a world that can never exist.
— Carl Henegan
Her body is one big refrigerator, where Art is well stored.
— Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher
To get from the tangible to the intangible (which mature artists in any medium claim as part of their task) a paradox of some kind has frequently been helpful. For the photographer to free himself of the tyranny of the visual facts upon which he is utterly dependent, a paradox is the only possible tool. And the talisman paradox for unique photography is to work "the mirror with a memory" as if it were a mirage, and the camera is a metamorphosing machine, and the photograph as if it were a metaphor…. Once freed of the tyranny of surfaces and textures, substance and form [the photographer] can use the same to pursue poetic truth" (Minor White, Newhall, 281).
— Minor White
Every criminal would be an artist if he had the talent, and every artist would become a criminal if he had the guts.
— Adam Langer, The Salinger Contract
I turn to Willa Cather’s quote: Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.
— Cameron Conaway, Caged: Memoirs of a Cage-Fighting Poet
here it was the whole world wrapped inside my armsAnd I let it all slip away
— Rascal Flatts
Edwin Land of Polaroid talked about the intersection of the humanities and science. I like that intersection. There's something magical about that place. There are a lot of people innovating, and that's not the main distinction of my career. The reason Apple resonates with people is that there's a deep current of humanity in our innovation. I think great artists and great engineers are similar in that they both have a desire to express themselves. In fact some of the best people working on the original Mac were poets and musicians on the side. In the seventies computers became a way for people to express their creativity. Great artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were also great art science. Michelangelo knew a lot about how to quarry stone, not just how to be a sculptor.
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
The mob not only grabs hold of art without being entitled to do so, but it also enters the artist. It takes up residence inside the artist and smashes a few holes in the wall, windows to the outer world: The mob wants to be seen.
— Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher
We all have an artist within us
—  but not all of us help him to create wings on our bodies! Those who help will know the taste of the skies!
An artist is nothing without his or her obsessions, and I have mine.
— Andres Serrano
Damien Hirst is acceptable because he's a brand. It's like buying a Porche. Hardline conservatives will never accept it, others think it's a massive waste of money but most will just shrug and move on
— Qatar cultural official
Dawn and sunset are the times when Nature herself is unstable and in flux. The nocturnal world and the daytime world are meeting, and for a brief time coexisting. It's not a neat hard cut, but a blurred, irregular dissolve. These moments are the seams in existence through which we can get a glimpse of the deeper, fundamentally random, chance workings of a system in which we are only a small, insignificant player.
— Bill Viola
I like to keep the meanings in my work flowing and open.
— Bill Viola
I would like to paint the way a bird sings.
— Claude Monet
The fact that for a long time Cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it means nothing. I do not read English, an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist. Why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about?" -Pablo Picasso.
— Pablo Picasso
God, what a ghastly enterprise to be in, though--and what an odd way to achieve success. I'm an exhibitionist who wants to hide, but is unsuccessful at hiding; therefore, somehow I succeed.
— David Foster Wallace
From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.
— Henri Matisse
The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work.
— Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Bleed me of art, and there won't be enough liquid left in me to spit! [Michelangelo Buonorotti]
— Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy
The awakening an artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others.
— Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
When you steal from an artist you are stealing their blood, sweat and tears.
— Tyler Shields
The purpose of art is to give the traveling human race an improved map that shows the way to itself. If art isn't for *that*, what is it for?
— William Saroyan, Short Drive, Sweet Chariot
The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell.
— Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
The advantage of having an artistic tradition is that the younger artist could see an organic link between the real life of one's country and its art work which is a sublimation of that life.
— Kuo Pao Kun
When a man devotes himself body and spirit to a single object, if he has training and aptitude, no matter how mediocre he may be in ordinary affairs, he will produce something so nearly akin to a work of genius as to deceive half the judges who think themselves competent to decide between genius and talent.("The Phantom Model")
— Hume Nisbet, Gaslit Nightmares: Stories by Robert W. Chambers, Charles Dickens, Richard Marsh, and Others
An artist's concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.
— Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World
Never be ashamed of madness, instead be ashamed of people that are ashamed of madness. Without a little bit of insanity, we would have never had the Theory of Relativity, electricity, airplanes, cars or your beloved iPhone. Madness got you that.
— Shannon L. Alder
How are his poems?""He's not as good as he thinks he is, but then most of us feel that way.
— Charles Bukowski, Hollywood
I didn't do music to live
—  I lived so that I could do music.
People listening to songs are like people reading novels: for a few minutes, for a few hours, someone else gets to come in and hijack that part of your brain that's always thinking. A good book or song kidnaps your interior voice and does all the driving. With the artist in charge you're free for a little while to leave your body and be someone else.
— Douglas Coupland, Player One: What Is to Become of Us
Of an artistic temperament, I deny that I am; yet I must possess something of the artist's faculty of making the most of present pleasure.
— Charlotte Brontë, Villette
As an artist, my talents are not mine alone to just keep. My creations have to touch lives, spread love and let my skills be used only in good things but should be selfless not through selfish motives. In this manner, I am giving the gift back to my Master Creator." - Elizabeth's Quotes
— Elizabeth E. Castillo
The artistic disposition is little more than an extreme form of sulking.
— Mark Simpson, Saint Morrissey: A Portrait of This Charming Man by an Alarming Fan
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does, the better.
— YourLeo
...if you're an artist, you've submitted to authority...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
What makes an amazing artist? It's not his ability to impress but his skill in touching people's lives through his craft. When he does even a simple piece of work with not much adornment (fanciful words, colors) and it moves the hearts of his audience, it is considered to be a masterpiece! A true artist lets people enter a different kind of sanctuary out of the conventional. What makes his work standout is its uniqueness -if it has a HEART.
— Elizabeth E. Castillo
You say great artists sell their souls for their art?""Maybe," she ventured."That's true, I suppose. If you're doing it right, anyway. I've probably sold mine. Jack's certainly sold his. And you, I imagine.""I have not!" she said, anger showing clear in her eyes. "Not literally," he said hastily. "But we give up being a person to be an artist, don't we?
— Sam Starbuck, The Dead Isle
Instead of chasing the idea of truth, what we should be doing is embracing the medium of drawing and using it for a purpose that fulfils our needs as an artist or designer.
— Peter Stanyer, The Complete Book of Drawing Techniques: A Complete Guide for the Artist
When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens ways for better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows there are still more pages possible.
— Robert Henri
The soul of an artist cannot be muted indefinitely. It must either be expressed or it will consume the host.
— Gerard de Marigny, Rise to the Call
I am living breathing freedom
— Hiroko Sakai
It is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the artist, is the expression in concrete form of their notions of reality. Like him, they deal with the verities of time and space, life and death, and the heights of exaltation as well as the depths of despair. The preoccupation with these eternal problems creates a common ground which transcends the disparity in the means used to achieve them.
— Mark Rothko, The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art
‎"But when I fell in love with black, it contained all color. It wasn’t a negation of color. It was an acceptance. Because black encompasses all colors. Black is the most aristocratic color of all.... You can be quiet and it contains the whole thing." Happy birthday to Louise Nevelson (1899-1988)!
— Louise Nevelson
Whether I'm painting or not, I have this overweening interest in humanity. Even if I'm not working, I'm still analyzing people.
— Alice Neel
Not anyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.
— Jan Pinkava Ratatouille
No. Not yet. A craftsman only. But I dream to be an artist. I pray that someday, if I work with enough care, if I am very very lucky, I will make a weapon that is a work of art. Call me an artist then, and I will answer.
— William Goldman, The Princess Bride
Art is a passion or it is nothing
— Robert Fry
People say 'I love Artists', but what they really know about Artists? They've ever thought about sharing the real madness with us? I believe those extreme passions/emotions in me separated from the real world is the sauce to pull out the inspirations out of me that touch the core of people's hearts, which is usually wandering about deep inside of you unconsciously covered with the social taboo called 'common sense'.
— Hiroko Sakai
Art is ment to travel from your heart to your head and out through your fingers...
— Kelly Bingham, Shark Girl
Mediocrity is Death.
— Suleman Abdullah
The more I drive myself into the depth of my inside, the more things come up to my vision, visibly or invisibly... I even do not know if I am seeing them with my eye or with my mind. I just need to copy them on my canvases. But this mental process is always overwhelming. I often have hard time to deal with my emotion on this state. You could call this depression on surface? But actually, so many 're-birth' and 'reform' are going on on my thoughts, inspiration, philosophy...etc in the underwater. I believe this struggle make my art real. My art always comes from my emotion.
— Hiroko Sakai
In every motions to put colors on my canvas, I feel like I am screaming, "I AM HERE"... To whom?.. To where?... Where am I going to...?
— Hiroko Sakai, "Rebirth"
Wherever I wander off to, when I draw, when I paint, I get my life back. I am lucky that I am an Artist.
— Hiroko Sakai
A good artist should laugh often!
— François Place, The Old Man Mad about Drawing: A Tale of Hokusai
The privilege of struggling artists is ... the life being buried in what we can't really afford of* what a gorgeous life!!
— Hiroko Sakai
my problem is that my body acts before my brain thinks... it sometimes brings me huge trouble, or also huge success. recently, my body and brain got come to an agreement. it may be far better to live this gambling life than living in boring average ...they at least make my art more interesting
— Hiroko Sakai
ONLY' having the Gift, people appreciate this madness as Art. Everybody wants to have Art in their lives, but no body wants to have what the Art came out from in their lives...
— Hiroko Sakai
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
When a mad man found some certain way to express his insanity in original way, he would get promoted to be called an Artist.... Wait, are you talking about me?
— Hiroko Sakai
Every person who is really an artist desires to create inside of himself another, deeper, more interesting life than the one that actually surrounds him.
— Konstantin Stanislavski
The art does not always mimic the artist. You never know the real person until you slide beneath their surface
— Lisa Renee Jones, If I Were You
A record deal doesn't make you an artist
—  you make yourself an artist
The hardest thing is to do something which is close to nothing because it is demanding all of you.
— Marina Abramović
An artist is a provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one. It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one. That is the realm of the artist.
— Federico Fellini
You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study... Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I'll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.
— Steven Pressfield
I've always liked the minds of criminals, they seem similar to artists.
— Richard Linklater
The great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa said that to be an artist means never to avert your eyes. And that's the hardest thing, because we want to flinch. The artist must go into the white hot center of himself, and our impulse when we get there is to look away and avert our eyes.
— Robert Olen Butler
Restoration is a skilled profession. You might even call it an art in its own right, except that it is frowned on to be original. First rule of restoration: follow the intention of the artist. Never try to improve on him.
— J.M. Coetzee, Slow Man
[Who are the artists you admire, Surrealist or otherwise?]Remedios Varo, Max Ernst, Charlotte Salomon, Goya, Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley is not so much about the impossible as he is about freaks and deformities, but those are interesting to me too.
— Audrey Niffenegger
El Sueno de la razon produce monstrous. (The sleep of reason breeds monsters)
— Francisco de Goya
I wanna be forever young.
— Alphaville
...vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of ’76 now look to a single and splendid government of an Aristocracy, founded on banking institutions and monied in corporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry.
— Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors,' and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, callous 'cash payment.' It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers.The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
— Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me. I mean, there are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, 'That person I see is a savage monster'; instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do. If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees. But then you take a look at what the corporation does, the effect of its legal structure, the vast inequalities in pay and conditions, and you see the reality is something far different.
— Noam Chomsky
Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater