Quotes about artist
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“… All artists’ work is autobiographical. Any writer’s work is a map of their psyche. You can really see what their concerns are, what their obsessions are, and what interests them.”

Kim Addonizio (1954) Poet, novelist

“When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

Way

“One criticizes in others what one recognizes and despises in oneself. For example, an artist who is revolted by another’s ambitiousness.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

“The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Hell, Despair

“Out of the cacophony of random suffering and chaos that can mark human life, the life artist sees or creates a symphony of meaning and order. A life of wholeness does not depend on what we experience. Wholeness depends on how we experience our lives.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Life, Suffering, Dependency

“A writer needs a pen, an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

“Authors and actors and artists and such - Never know nothing, and never know much.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

“Conform, go crazy, or become an artist.”

Nancy Springer (1948) American author of fantasy, young adult literature, mystery, and science fiction

“They lived freely among the students, they argued with the men over philosophical, sociological and artistic matters, they were just as good as the men themselves: only better, since they were women.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover

Women, Men

“To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

1951 - 1968, The Creative Act', 1957
Context: Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity; to all appearances the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.

Way, Appearance, Time

“We're artists too, but we do a good job hiding it, don't we?”

Roberto Bolaño book The Savage Detectives

Source: The Savage Detectives

“because talent alone doesn't make an artist”

Maureen Johnson book 13 Little Blue Envelopes

Source: 13 Little Blue Envelopes

“I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you're an artist, by children if you're not.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

Source: Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

Life, Children, Art, Feeling

“Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy.”

Georges Simenon (1903–1989) Belgian writer

Interviewed in Paris Review, Summer 1955; reprinted in Malcolm Cowley (ed.) Writers at Work (New York: Viking Press, 1959) p. 146.

Happiness, Thinking

“Draw a line; draw a line that pleases you. And remember that it is not the artist's role to copy the outlines of things but to create a world of his own lines on paper." (pp.28-29)”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Source: Life is Elsewhere

World, Drawing

“The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Source: 1910s, Prejudices, First Series (1919), Ch. 16
Context: The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man — that is, virtuous in the Y. M. C. A. sense — has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading.

World

“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.

(, 8 September 1935)”

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer

Source: The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers. Vol. 1, 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist

Life, Personality

“The serious revolutionary, like the serious artist, can't afford to lead a sentimental or self-deceiving life.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

Life

“Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.”

Janet Fitch (1955) American writer

Life, Knowledge, Tear, Tattoo

“The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being defeated.”

Charles Baudelaire book Le Spleen de Paris

L'étude du beau est un duel où l'artiste crie de frayeur avant d'être vaincu. <br class="br">III: "Le Confiteor de l'artiste" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Petits_Po%C3%A8mes_en_prose_-_III._Le_Confiteor_de_l%27artiste <br class="br">Le Spleen de Paris (1862) <br class="br">Source: Twenty Prose Poems

Beauty, Study

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

World, Imagination, Knowledge, Drawing

“Sakura: Never figured you for the artistic type.
Sai: Looks can be decieving.”

Masashi Kishimoto book Naruto

Source: Naruto, Vol. 32: The Search for Sasuke

“The worms were beautifully drawn, with their nervous systems and reproductive organs shaded in different colors of highlighter, but the artist had also given them big goofy smiling faces. Grotesque but lovable in a cross-eyed way.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 1

Smile, Color, Way

“Metaphors. This was the cost of making out with an artist.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

“Why all these paintings of you? Because I'm an artist, Emma. These pictures are my heart. And if my heart was a canvas, every square inch of it would be painted over with you.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

Heart, Painting

“I used to think it was possible for an artist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory.”

Don DeLillo Mao II

Part 1, Ch. 3
Source: Mao II (1991)
Context: There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists... Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.

Life, Thinking

“To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

“A truly great artist has many talents.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”

Walter Isaacson book Steve Jobs

Source: Steve Jobs

Idea

“To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gift -absolute gifts- which have not been acquired by one's effort. And, moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Soul, Courage, Effort

“The real wonders of life lie in the depths. Exploring the depths for truths is the real wonder which the child and the artist know: magic and power lie in truth.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

Life, Truth, Lie

“Our mind is the canvas on which the artists lay their colour; their pigments are our emotions; their chiaroscuro the light of joy, the shadow of sadness. The masterpiece is of ourselves, as we are of the masterpiece.”

Kakuzo Okakura book The Book of Tea

Source: The Book of Tea

Sadness, Light, Joy

“We have artists with no scientific knowledge and scientists with no
artistic knowledge and both with no spiritual sense of gravity at all,
and the result is not just bad, it is ghastly.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Knowledge, Sense

“The answers were maddeningly absent—it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title, artist, or even a few bars to bring it back.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Way, Feeling

“And moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul… the brave soul. The soul that dares and defies.”

Kate Chopin (1850–1904) American author

Soul, Courage

“The role of the artist is to not look away.”

Akira Kurosawa (1910–1998) Japanese film maker

“An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

As quoted in Newsweek (16 May 1955) Variant translation: Asking an artist to talk about his work is like asking a plant to discuss horticulture.

Art

“Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it”

D.H. Lawrence book Studies in Classic American Literature

Studies in Classic American Literature (1923)

“don’t write out of what I know; I write out of what I wonder. I think most artists create art in order to explore, not to give the answers. Poetry and art are not about answers to me; they are about questions.”

Lucille Clifton (1936–2010) American poet

Art, Question, Thinking

“Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's individual value-judgments.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Romantic Manifesto (1969), Chapter 1 ("The Psycho-Epistemology of Art")
Source: The Fountainhead

Art, Reality

“If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Author's Note, p. xi
Source: Life of Pi (2001)

Dreams, Imagination, Support, Reality

“I'm for the individual as opposed to the corporation. The way it is the individual is the underdog, and with all the things a corporation has going for them the individual comes out banged on her head. The artist is nothing. It's really tragic.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Way

“Fear doesn't go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Fear

“An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn’t
know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder
why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or
steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Business

“But no artist, I now realize, can be satisfied with art alone. There is a natural craving for recognition which cannot be gain-said.”

Agatha Christie And Then There Were None

Source: And Then There Were None

Art, Nature

“If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), "Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?" chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Death, Confidence, Chance, Self-confidence

“An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.”

Charles Bukowski book Notes of a Dirty Old Man

Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969)

Way

“An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

Loneliness

“An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

Source: Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

Personality

“Like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.”

Toni Morrison book Sula

Source: Sula (1973)

Art

“The romantics were prompted to seek exotic subjects and to travel to far off places. They failed to realize that, though the transcendental must involve the strange and unfamiliar, not everything strange or unfamiliar is transcendental. The unfriendliness of society to his activity is difficult for the artists to accept. Yet this very hostility can act as a lever for true liberation... Both the sense of community and of security depend on the familiar. Free of them, transcendental experiences become possible.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Source: after 1970, posthumous, Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics', 1990, p. 167

Hostility, Travel, Communication, Sense

“Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

People

“Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Angels

“Isn’t every human being both a scientist and an artist; and in writing of human experience, isn’t there a good deal to be said for recognizing that fact and for using both methods?”

James Agee book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Source: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

“A work-in-progress generates its own energy field. You, the artist or entrepreneur, are pouring love into the work; you are suffusing it with passion and intention and hope.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: Do the Work

Love, Hope, Passion

“Every artist was first an amateur.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Progress of Culture (see also: Art) <br class="br">1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Books, Letters and Social Aims http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=5&id=74&Itemid=149 (1876)

“You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet, because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Source: http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/65-aug.htm Bob Dylan Interview

People

“I like my smock. You can tell the quality of the artist by the quality of his smock. Actually, I just like to say smock. Smock smock smock smock smock smock.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

“A writer's heart, a poet's heart, an artist's heart, a musician's heart is always breaking. It is through that broken window that we see the world…”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

World, Heart

“An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Business

“I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Hate, Idea, Thinking, Passion

“Sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”

Itzhak Perlman (1945) Israeli-American violinist and conductor

Music

“Artists are here to disturb the peace.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Peace

“Please don't make me a joke. End the interview with what I believe. I don't mind making jokes, but I don't want to look like one… I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Context: Please don't make me a joke. End the interview with what I believe. I don't mind making jokes, but I don't want to look like one... I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity... If fame goes by, so long, I've had you, fame. If it goes by, I've always known it was fickle. So at least it's something I experienced, but that's not where I live.

Her last taped interview, with Richard Meryman, published in LIFE magazine a few days before her death. (3 August 1962); quoted in Ms. magazine (August 1972)