Artists Quotes

To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this matter for experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soul grasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists.

Artists who write songs... what they're going through usually comes through in their music.

Some artists want to confront. Some want to invoke thought. They're all necessary and they're all valid.

I'm excited about there being more of a sisterhood these days. Back in the '90s there was a lot of hate - the women I looked up to as artists were dissing me! It's not so patriarchal these days - there's more love and a lot less hate!

I get to study and I got to mimic and what I basically did was I stole from every person that I could steal from. I was an imitator. That's what I was. It was years before I could take all of these things that I loved about all of these different artists and put them together and find my voice.

There are so many great artists that are doing interesting things, that I don't want to focus on boring people.

I'm quite ignorant about fashion and I'm colourblind, so it's all a tad tricky. My only knowledge of that world comes through Christopher Bailey, whom I first met in 2008 when I did a campaign for Burberry that featured musicians, artists, actors and sportsmen.

A lot of artists are much more concerned about how their work is used and how it's disseminated. That, to artists, is as important as the money, for some people.

There has never been any proper commitment to marketing these artists and their music. We are not Sony.

Artists should always think of themselves as cosmic instruments for storytelling.

Mistakes and dead-ends often mean more to these artists than any proven problem.

Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.

A great thing happening now in art is that artists are using the figure, the body, clothing, life.

When I was 17, I worked in a mentoring program in Harlem designed to improve the community. That's when I first gained an appreciation of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when African-Americans rose to prominence in American culture. For the first time, they were taken seriously as artists, musicians, writers, athletes, and as political thinkers.

Many artists in Mexico fight to be the Latina Madonna. I don't want that! Never! Maybe she's the American Gloria Trevi!

The more far-out artists, the better.

We wanted to interview people on the show, do variety, get the artists, the guests involved with us in our group. They wanted to keep the four guys together. We wanted to change the format.

It's almost required with major artists that there's some duality. And I've got duality everywhere.

The artist is something of an outsider in America. I have always felt that America does not value its artists, certainly not in the sense that the Europeans do.

People are afraid to ask musicians to be involved in projects because they anticipate being turned down. Young artists hesitate before contacting me. People in my position don't get approached often enough.

Before, I was more concerned with getting on the radio, like many young artists.

Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.

Music is more emotional than prose, more revolutionary than poetry. I'm not saying I've got the answers, just a of questions that I don't hear other artists asking.

Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius.

As I had collaborated with visual artists before whether on installations, on performance pieces, in the context of theatre works and as I had taught for a time in art colleges the idea of writing music in response to painting was not alien.

Our responsibility as artists is to challenge ourselves.

Challenge America grants go to the towns and hamlets of this sprawling country, where big touring companies will rarely go, and major actors, actresses, writers and artists may never appear in person.

Many of the artists who have represented Negro life have seen only the comic, ludicrous side of it, and have lacked sympathy with and appreciation for the warm big heart that dwells within such a rough exterior.

The deals that were made for Black artists at that time were not the deals that were made for white artists.

I feel a lot more comfortable being me these days. I'm constantly told that my work is good. A lot of fans and a lot of other artists say my songs and albums mean a lot to them. Isn't that what's important?