Artist Quotes - Page 201

If you're not a successful artist it's your fault.

Fortunately I had a great intern who did a lot of the research on Andy's prices, which of course are phenomenal, but getting them straight - you know, he's reached this $100million plateau that only a handful of other artists have reached, which puts him in the company of Cezanne, Klimt, Picasso, and such.

When I started I didn't know anything about music. I came from an absolutely non-musical, non-artistic background.

When I started I would have called myself an artist but the discipline I chose in art was music and text.

I mean my point as an artist is I'm on my own little weird journey across the sky here and whether or not anybody's listening, or listening to the degree I would like them to, at the end of the day has to be an inconsequential thing because I can't chase this culture.

Cities are gentrified by the following types of people in sequence: first the risk-oblivious (artists), then the risk-aware (developers), finally the risk adverse (dentists from New Jersey).

Feeling more comfortable onstage is something I've worked on - it's really about just being the artist I am.

Being an artist is not only what you do, but how you live your life.

Other [artists'] music is really what you get most inspiration from, whether consciously or subconsciously. I like a lot of old music and a lot of soul music. I also really like a lot of new stuff.

I have no interest in artists who are purely affirmative, who've made a commercialized fetish of the culture's stupidity.

I literally make music for my wife and my friends. I don't feel beholden to my fans. I don't even really know who they are. But, I know that this whole thing started with me making stuff that I got off on, and I've gotta believe that that's how it's going to end, too. That's the only way it can go. There are a lot of artists who have gotten pretty caught up in that. That's why I like the defeatist attitude. Just assume that no one is going to like it and that no one cares, and you'll end up making something that you really like.

I like to believe a true fan of music or an artist has a genuine respect for what the artist does and has a distinct understanding of their actions. In that buying an album they are helping the artist to continue making music. It's hard because everyone wants something to be free.

EVERY SINGLE DANCER, SINGER and BAND MEMBER is a BRILLIANT SOLO ARTIST

It's very often the artist who gives a voice to the voiceless by speaking up when no one else will.

I think that every so-called history book and film biography should be prefaced by the statement that what follows is the author's rendition of events and circumstances.

Traditional graffiti writers have a bunch of rules they like to stick to, and good luck to them, but I didn't become a graffiti artist so I could have somebody else tell me what to do. If you're the type who gets sentimental about people scribbling over your stuff, I suggest graffiti is probably not the right hobby for you.

The artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there's a difference: Hoarders collect indiscriminately, artists collect selectively. They only collect things that they really love.

The director works as an interpretive artist, but he's still an artist, so you also have to give him room to create and to put his vision of the play or his translation or interpretation of the material on the stage.

My life had been defined by the apartheid years. Now we were going into an era of democracy... and I believed that I didn't have really a function as an artist, as a useful artist, in that anymore.

The cultured man is an artist, an artist in humanity.

I love poetry. It's at the heart of everything I do. Poetry transforms what we call language, and uses language as the stuff to become something else. I get spun around by what happens in words. When that occurs, it inspires images that seem so original to me as an artist, even though I'm following what the poem has offered.

As an artist, environment has a lot of impact on choices, and these choices can change by changing your location.

I have been in the music industry ever since I was six years old. I have been inspired by so many great artists and of course trying to be original at the same time. I try not to work under boundaries while I'm making music.

I'm not conditioned to be an entertainer. An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself. The problem with that is artists are misunderstood by all. I'm not interested in the clarinet but in music. we speak our emotions into music. An artist should write for himself and not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away. My situation is the same. Let them concentrate on my music and not on me. I like the music. I love it and live it, in fact. But for me, the business part of music just plain stinks.

A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument--a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself--in soli tude, it may be; or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in singing.