Artists Quotations

Genius can probably run on ahead and seek out new ways. But the good artists who follow after genius - and I count myself among these - have to restore the lost connection once more.

I think the key to great art and great artists is to just fully be yourself and not be scared of that, and be the extremes of your personality. Show the extremes of your personality and embrace the imperfections. Embrace the things about yourself that you might not like.

Lauryn Hill's always been a hero of mine. And Bruno Mars, Janelle Monae and Adele, those are the current artists I would reference in terms of who's been able to do really amazing pop records with really cool, organic throwback elements of soul in there as well.

When you're a Chicago artist, to play Lollapalooza, that's not a normal thing. It's artists on a path to a certain place that do that. Chief Keef did it; Kids These Days did it; Cool Kids did it. And I'm the next Cool-Kids-Chief, if you will.

We don't have real hours and we don't have a boss, so artists create rules for themselves that they then break. It's transgressive in such a personal way.

Most artists don't get paid for what they do, and they are lucky if they can persuade a friend to let them show something at a kid's birthday party.

Artists don't compare themselves to each other based on money. Nobody really knows what money other artists have. They don't care that much. The measure is the work and how you think your work is perceived. How the museums are. How you are doing.

I urge younger artists to know that you don't have to be anything you don't want. You can do whatever's comfortable for you. From the music I make, to the things I do in my life, I'm true to my R&B core. I have the capability to make pop records and crossover, but that's not my aim.

The bohemian life that reigned in Paris until the end of the '50s is gone. The artists had more time to think, to reflect; success didn't come so suddenly.

The people of Texas are rightly proud of their own, just like the French and the Italians, but visiting artists have often been given a shot in the history of art.

Even a cup of coffee tastes so much sweeter because you've come once again out of the, literally, out of the edge of death, and that's the condition I suppose that a lot of artists and writers would like to be in.

Love in capital letters is important. It is impossible to live without love. You must have the feeling of being loved. All artists need love - from the audience, friends and relatives. But true and faithful friends are exceptionally rare.

I guess people don't think that young girls or young artists have opinions, but I'm so glad that there's artists like Lorde and Raury and Kehlani because they're showing other people that young people can have an opinion and a voice and do really well with it. I'm glad I can be one of those people.

There's no platform for an unsigned music scene in the main cities - it's all hyped acts or showcases behind closed doors. I read about artists that are doing it 'the old-fashioned way' and touring, as if that's a unique thing to do - well, that should just be the way it is.

In my opinion, the true pioneers are those artists who make manifest in their works the new content, the determining characteristics of life in our time.

The human eye has long fascinated lovers, artists and physicians. The ancient Greeks dissected eyes, but struggled to understand how they worked, unclear as to whether they received or emanated light.

Most comic scriptwriters are very bad. The artists are good, but the writers are so bad.

Communion was born out of shared frustration in 2006. We felt that although the likes of MySpace and YouTube opened up the playing field for songwriters online, people's discovery of these new artists was only skin deep.

There are a lot of female artists my age around at the moment, but they're all American and blonde and blue-eyed and smiley. I'm totally the opposite of that. I want to show a bit more attitude and I have an opinion.

In Spain, after the dictatorship, thanks to Pedro Almodovar, many artists put on the streets through art a big explosion of freedom.

I am in love with old school funk and soul music. That's what I grew up listening to, and I want to bring that style back with my music. I love artists like Stevie Wonder, Donna Summer, Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Earth, Wind, & Fire, Bruno Mars, Justin Timberlake, and more!

In the beginning of rock n' roll, there was always innovation. Artists were always trying to do something new and something different.

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.

Artists don't really want to be marginalized. They believe that everybody should be able to appreciate the experience that an artist gives them, an experience that connects us to each other in a deep way.

It's pretty cool that artists like Flo Rida and Bingo Players can be inspired to interpret a song like 'Piano in the Dark' in completely new genres. As an artist and writer, it's the highest compliment we can be paid.

In England, there is a dividing line between artists and illustrators, who are thought inferior to painters. Well, that's absolute rubbish. Some of the most creative work is being done in children's books. In Japan, everything is art. They don't say painting is better than ceramics or dress design.

I'm personally looking for artists that are along the lines of today's pop stars. Whether it be a Rihanna or a Justin Bieber or a Kanye West or a Beyonce or a Lady Gaga, I'm looking for talent that's like that, that's what I love.

I have just returned from Arenas and feel very tired. His Excellency loaded me with a thousand honours; I have painted his portrait and that of his wife and boy and girl with unexpected success, for other artists had been there previously and not been successful.

Many people think voice over artists just read, there's much more to it. Without acting beats, scene study and improving skills, you won't make it.

Spiritual teachers and artists that have opened the eye of wisdom for the world, and visionary community builders, have influenced my work.

Artists were always referred to as great artists. I thought that's what the profession was. One word: great-artist. There wasn't one moment in my life when I thought I wanted to be anything else.

I've learned over the years that the best way to develop as an artist is to make things. So I tell young artists it's not enough to be an actor anymore, you have to be a filmmaker/writer/director. There's no excuse for waiting around for a job. You have to be active and make things.

I think artists are really the root of a tree. They can search for truth or reality in their own way, and the gallery can support them - the outside part of the tree, where it is more about reaching the outside world, connecting with the outside world. That is the role of the gallery, no? Why does the artist have to do that?

The truth is that painting is all about scale; you use scale to create experience. A lot of artists have lost that ability. They don't even know that's something they should be doing.

I want to be able to say, 'you think you're odd, I'm even odder and I made it - you can too!' I want to direct, do more with 'The Dance Scene,' sign artists and just provide opportunities. I'm just getting started and having the time of my life!

Real artists free of the tedium of money can use, now, all of society as an idea factory.

Oh man, I love what the South brings as far as the soul, and I really have noticed from even the early days of listening to OutKast and Goodie Mob that Atlanta and the South has a diverse sound to it. You have bounce music. You have soulful musicians. You have artists with vocals who try to do different things.

I don't feel that electronic music has to stand on the back of urban artists or anyone else to be recognized. It's great music.

A lot of very popular mainstream artists are products of record companies and marketing companies, and any time anyone can stand outside of that, that's interesting.

I'm inspired by artists who use a limited palette, like painter Piet Mondrian, and the White Stripes, two musicians who create an incredible sound. Our food is starting to go back to a 'less is more' style.

I was known for being talented, but I was still the fat girl. And it wasn't what people were looking for. There's a lot that you hear. There's a lot of cruelty out there. Some of it comes from the executive offices. It comes from other artists at times. It was a very difficult thing to overcome.

I think one of the things that writers and creative artists generally have to deal with is the censors that we have in our heads, the voices that we have that say you better not tell that and don't tell that, and people will think you're not a good girl, and your grandmother's going to be mad at you and all of those things.

I was raised in Topanga Canyon. It's an eclectic community up in the Santa Monica mountains. A lot of musicians lived there - Joni Mitchell, Neil Young - as well as artists and craftspeople.

I used to have sort of mixed feelings about a producer whose only skills seemed to be going into the studio, schmoozing the artists and making them feel good. I can see now that in some cases, that's what you have to do because that's the only way you're going to get them to produce.

My voice is a combination of how I grew up and what I was listening to growing up. I like a lot of different kinds of music and am always being inspired in different ways by different artists for different reasons.

I'm not the type of artist that's like, 'Let's go out and party and dance your life away!' I think those artists are so cool, but I wanted meaning in my songs and they have messages.

Artists - musicians, painters, writers, poets - always seem to have had the most accurate perception of what is really going on around them, not the official version or the popular perception of contemporary life.

I'm happy to say that at 62, I think I've reached that point where stuff doesn't bother me as much, and my gratitude level has gone way up, especially having gone through the loss that I've had, and losing so many of the great artists that I was close to. They taught me how to see it with a grain of salt and a lot of humor and perspective.

It should be if you're a good singer and a good songwriter, you should have your spot. You get everybody trying to release the prettiest guy, but that doesn't mean they're the best artist. Most of the time the true artists are just normal old dudes.

I see everybody arguing about what the value of music should be instead of what I think the bigger conversation is, which is that music has value, it's subjective and we're moving to a new era where the audience is taking more responsibility for supporting artists at whatever level.

The fact is that viewers are fickle and it's rare that such a large group of people can be categorized in any type of way. There's enough content to go around, and if we stop focusing on numbers and start focusing on the quality of the project, then I think everybody - viewers and artists alike - is going to be a lot happier.

I think it would be bad for culture and the art if artists and people who develop the apparatus to support those artists don't get paid.

Artists forget than the first purpose of a comic character is to convey emotion. Everything else, like realism, or other kinds of virtuosity, is an optional extra. If you sacrifice expression for the sake of other concerns, you're putting the cart before the horse.

The reason con artists get away with what they get away with is, their victims are ashamed of their own blindness and their own gullibility, and they tend to just quietly go away.

I have a lot of respect for all the artists I get compared to, even if, as an artist, you prefer to have your own identity.

In a time when it is common for chefs to simply reproduce the innovations of others, the few who speak for themselves through their food become the skilled artists of their time.

I grew up with all kinds ofmusic, but my heart was particularly drawn to Country Music because of the guitar playing, the lyrics and of artists like Steve Warner and Vince Gill.

I want to challenge myself to see where my limit is and experiment with a lot of different films. A lot of artists from Asia focus too much on their Asian background. I don't want to let go of my background, but to be a success in the U.S., which is my goal, I realize I need to surround myself with American filmmakers and producers.

I tend to look out for things with a resonance to my youth - artists or objects that seemed romantic all those years ago. I never buy anything purely for its value. I like possessions that smile back at me.

The song, 'Life is Better,' is about hip-hop. It's about my love for hip-hop. And, you know, I go through all the artists from the beginning to the end, you know. And, well, not to the end, but since the beginning to now, you know.

It's important for any artist - particularly female artists - to feel completely comfortable and to know what they're trying to do.

I hate to sound like a romantic adolescent, but I believe artists don't generally see art as a career choice; they simply can't overcome their desire to make art, and will live on little income for as long as they have to, before they start to sell their work - or give up and get a paying job.

In the early 1990s we witnessed the emergence of a revitalized contemporary Chinese art world that began as a reaction against the government-approved Social Realist style. Zhang Xiaogang, Huang Yong Ping, Ai WeiWei, Yue Minjun, and Wang Guangyi were among the first group of artists to establish a movement that became known as Cynical Realism.

My education was dominated by modernist thinkers and artists who taught me that the supreme imperative was courage to face the awful truth, to scorn the soft-minded optimism of religious and secular romantics as well as the corrupt optimism of governments, advertisers, and mechanistic or manipulative revolutionaries.

'Painting like a child' isn't a negative for me... it's something only great artists can really achieve. The childlike quality of some of Picasso's drawings is precisely what makes them so masterful and extraordinary; the ability to express complete visions, feelings and portraits through a continuous line.

I had the great opportunity to work with some of the greatest artists - the Beach Boys, the Temptations, the Four Tops. Otis Redding. Wilson Pickett. Stevie Wonder. So many great singers. And don't forget Clarence Carter!

My respect for artists is very high. I think to get the most out of them, you have to liberate them. I think part of liberating them is saying, 'Come up with something brilliant, new, and fresh. Stop thinking based on what has been beat into you by executives or publishers in terms of what's going to work and what's not. Don't react, just act.'

We as artists are actively encouraged - by other authors, your agent, publisher, and society - not to think about money, strategy, how to manage your career, how to create a brand, because we're supposed to focus on the art.

If I'm not putting out music, I'mma be producing for everybody. I got an artist named Mike Slice. He's nice, and he's real good. I'm doing a bunch of production for all the artists in the industry because I'm as much as a producer as I am an artist.

I think what's beautiful when you're looking at artists like Macklemore and you're looking at artists like Ayron Jones, they're proud of Seattle and they're bringing it back. Seattle's a real music town. When you act ashamed of that, you should be pushed outta the game as far as I'm concerned.

Physically, it's getting impossible for me to travel that much. I want to support my artists by showing up at their openings, but I can't always be in Hong Kong one minute and Geneva the next.

There is a slight problem with being a conceptual artist these days: You won't get paid. But this levels the field and takes the art of money out of the field of serious art. The only conceptual artists who would conceive of making money on the Internet are a lowbrow species known as hustlers.

A lot of artists get famous overseas first. I don't know what it is here. I have a large underground following in the U.S., but I don't get the airplay as much as I do in, say, Australia. Over there, they can play whatever they like, it seems, but not so much here.

We throw at female artists this expectation that their work has to speak to the female experience. And if it doesn't, you're letting the side down. Throwing this stumbling block in the way of female artists is counterintuitive.

I probably should have a brand, but I think you can't get the best artists to work for you if you're branded. I get the trade-off, and I really would like to be more famous for my work, get more credit for my achievements.

Folk-punk artists like This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb or Paul Baribeau were popular in the Florida punk community. I saw people early on combine roots music with more aggressive music.

Still, the film nearly didn't happen a number of times. There were great arguments with United Artists about how to reduce the cost because they were nothing if not conscious of the price of the film.

Comic-strip artists generally have very modest ambitions. Day to day, we labor to fit together all these little moving parts - a character or two, a few lines of dialogue, framing, pacing, payoff - but we certainly don't think of them adding up over time to some larger portrait of our times.

The kids I talk to are convinced their generation will make the best music. And the greatest artists have yet to be discovered. I walk around with that thought every day.

I toured with Skrillex, did an HBO commercial with Diplo. In the hip hop movement, I was the first artist Travis Scott ever featured with before he blew up. I had the songs with Chris Brown and Tyga. I've worked with some of the biggest artists in the world.

People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.

If brands can find a voice that matches them, and the artist embraces it, they can find a way that would serve them that doesn't feel like a sellout to the artists and has dramatic impact for the brand.

If you want to do what you want to do, you cannot work. So art is going to be finished, and this is the will of the Islamic republic: to not have any artists or art and close the doors of all the cinemas and music and everything.

My real musical discovery started when I was 10 with Stevie Wonder and the Jackson 5, and acts that I connected with because they were young when they were doing it, like me. Then I kind of came into my own a couple of years later; I found new artists that shaped my musical landscape. For instance, Kings of Leon played a big part in that.

Fine artists reflect, and then they act. Fashion photographers - we act, and then we reflect.

What's nice about Twitter is that you've got that point of contact with your fans that artists have never had before. I think it's good for musicians. Just as long as you don't start tweeting things about your girlfriends or boyfriends - there's got to be a line.

In 19th-century France, artists were part of government. Artists are very sensitive to their time. They're very thoughtful people - it makes sense to hear what they have to say.

I'm always weary of connotations. I don't want people to listen to the music I make presently because they liked my previous work, or to dismiss it because they didn't. I'm guilty of this as well - having preconceptions about other artists - but it's stupid because all music exists on its own and should be listened to with a clear head.

Most artists don't understand what they do, and I don't think we have to. Other people do that better - they understand what I do better than I do!

Ursula Nordstrom was famous for finding artists in unlikely places. Maurice Sendak was a window designer, and she just came across one of his windows. Everyone was looking to find a talent.

Many of the contradictions in Postmodern art come from the fact that we're trying to be artists in a democratic society. This is because in a democracy, the ideal is compromise. In art, it isn't.

I think all artists are only interested in a couple of themes, really. I'm primarily interested in change and connection as being this restorative force. I write about them because that's what I think about in my own life.

I don't buy art just to make artists happy any more than I want to make them sad if I sell their work.

The reality is that art has often risen to greater heights than the people who created it. Many flawed artists have created great works of art. You have to decide if you are going to listen to Richard Wagner's music or not because he was very anti-Semitic.

Any time that we read a script and the 'Leverage' team has to infiltrate a place, assume identities, or become con artists ourselves to take down the really bad con artists, it's always fun to do that.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

I never really thought of myself as a musician. I'm not saying Sonic Youth was a conceptual-art project for me, but in a way, it was an extension of Warhol. Instead of making criticism about popular culture, as a lot of artists do, I worked within it to do something.

The only people left in America who seem not to be artists are illustrators.

Magic Johnson was in the seventh year of his Hall of Fame career when thoughts of his basketball afterlife led him to the office of uber-executive Michael Ovitz, co-founder of Creative Artists Agency, Hollywood's most powerful agency.

I'd like to see the comics' style expanded. I'd like to see artists synthesize traditional comics arts style with fine-arts styles or whatever. I like to see innovation. I don't like it when an art form becomes stagnant.