Artist Quotes - Page 314

An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity.

Every true artist feels that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil.

if there's a spirit world why don't the ghosts of dead artists get together and inhibit bad playwrights from tormenting first-nighters?

In America it's a particular problem. The artist, particularly the poet, is just unacknowledged; if I can use that dumb word. Maybe it has always been that way. Maybe the only way he or she can be acknowledged is to be connected with some movement, be it religious or political.

The artist looks for a subject. You know, a lot of new poets don't seem to have a subject. I don't totally understand that.

If the Buddhist's job is to be detached, I think that the artist's job is to be both detached and attached.

Maybe being an artist is a kind of detachment. You're in the cave, you're isolated, you're apart from everything and it's there you can find out what you believe in, or what is - what is the nature of being, as you see it.

Why was the painting made? What ideas of the artist can we sense? Can the personality and sensitivity of the artist be felt when studying the work? What is the artist telling us about his or her feelings about the subject? What response do I get from the message of the artist? Do I know the artist better because of the painting?

Every writer and artist wonders what in the world people of other professions can find to live for.

I don't really know where I got my artists idea. The scraps of what I remember do not explain to me where it came from. I only know that by this time it was definitely settled in my mind.

I believe an artist is the last person in the world who can afford to be affected.

I was a big fan of Jean-Claude Van-Damme growing up, and I always wanted to be a martial artist 'cause of him.

I find that it is important to work slowly. Anyone who looks at such a canvas will follow the same path the artist took, and he will experience that it is the path which counts more than the outcome of it, and that the route taken has been the most interesting part.

I hate categories. Hank Williams is a great artist, period. Bob Dylan is a great artist, so is Marty Robbins. They just classify these people and put them in categories so they can sell the thing easier.

How would you define [Bob] Dylan? You can't. That's a true artist. How about Ray Charles? Can you classify Ray Charles? No, you can't. He's just great, period.

I try to keep my artistic opinions not so much "to myself" but "on myself."

The idea is that what an artist lives through should broaden his notion of what it is possible for a human being to live through, and that new understanding should then get into and expand the work.

An artist's job is to be interested in things as they are.

I find that the great artists I've met are people who are so playfully invested in their process that, even if it doesn't come out the way they like, they still power through and even take energy from it.

My artistic approach is that you're supposed to be a little baffled.

The artist's job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn't damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.

With an artist no sane man quarrels, any more than with the colour of a child's eyes.

Artists have no less talents than ever, their taste, their vision, their sentiment are often interesting; they are mighty in their independence and feeble only in their works.

The wonder of an artist's performance grows with the range of his penetration, with the instinctive sympathy that makes him, in his mortal isolation, considerate of other men's fate and a great diviner of their secret, so that his work speaks to them kindly, with a deeper assurance than they could have spoken with to themselves.

An artist may visit a museum but only a pedant can live there.