Artist Quotes - Page 338

One of the marks of true genius is a quality of abundance. A rich, rollicking abundance, enough to give indigestion to ordinary people. Great artists turn it out in rolls, in swatches. They cover whole ceilings with paintings, they chip out a mountainside in stone, they write not one novel but a shelf full. It follows that some of their work is better than other. As much as a third of it may be pretty bad. Shall we say this unevenness is the mark of their humanity - of their proud mortality as well as of their immortality?

The Nobel Prize comes from outside, it's a social recognition [reconnaissance] in a way. And I think a true artist is driven by interior necessities.

[Albert Camus] wasn't writing under the influence of the Nobel Prize. That was an external thing for the artist in him.

I think for an artist what is most important is to touch as many hearts as possible.

What I find interesting is this ricochet effect, that the audience perceives the work and then does something with it, throws it back to the world, and there's an ongoing interaction between work and audience, which doesn't belong to the artist anymore - from the moment you release it, it doesn't belong to anybody.

It seems to be the easiest thing in the world these days to make scurrilous accusations against Muslims, and in my case it directly impacts on my relief work and damages my reputation as an artist. The harm done is often difficult to repair.

It would be awesome to stay popular, but if I was only an underground artist, I would be okay with that.

Making music and art is about expressing something that's universally human, maybe even beyond human, at best. To make it about the artist and to dwell upon biographical information can only make it singular, and I am really, really disgusted by that.

On the one hand, rock is so predictable, but at the same time, the basic idea that an artist can cut through everything and make something that they believe in or make something that they love or speaks to them personally, that it can cut through the bullshit. But at the same time, the cliches of sincerity can kill that.

I don't know if many people realize that Dolph Lundgren is a chemical engineer. He's not a dumb blond guy. This guy is smart and he's a martial artist.

Times are tough in the music industry, and now more than ever we need people like the team at Paste looking out for artists on the fringe of the mainstream.

The reviewer is a singularly detested enemy because he is, unlike the hapless artist, invulnerable.

I respect country music because I feel like it's more about the talent and the songwriting and I put on a big show and we have a lot of stuff, but I feel confident in myself enough as an artist and a singer that I can have all of those fun toys and know that we don't need all the bells and whistles either.

We see new male artists have their first single reach No. 1 on the charts, but it generally takes a female a lot longer to build momentum.

It wasn't just like, "I want to make a record that sounds like classic rock" at all. It was more like, "I want to make a record that is a little more unsettling and maybe isn't as easily understood now." That just seemed more important, like, for me to make as an artist, than it was to make something to make people feel safe right away.

The music industry has completely restructured itself in the last couple of years because it hasn't been making money. Labels are signing bands they trust as artistic entities, instead of cash cows. They're signing bands because they believe that the bands have tastes beyond anything they could concoct themselves.

It's a lot different being a hip-hop artist. You just show up with a piece of paper with your words on it, say it in the mic, then you leave and some other guy does all the music.

Radio is so cutthroat, but I do feel like the music industry is structured so differently than it used to be. I'm amazed and in awe of artists who can build a parallel universe that's so big and clearly defined that the mainstream finally has to pay attention.

It is very common with artists who are of a generation that has already gone by to get overly concerned with, Oh my God I have to sell to the younger generation.

I didn't want to be an artist.

I believe that every artist has his or her own vision of the world; our job as artists is to find and express that vision. The most important thing is to keep exploring, yourself and your materials.

For me there's several components to picture-taking and it starts with my goals as an artist. It's capturing I guess the inner life of my subject and then it is giving them their idealized version of themselves.

So many artists who came out during that time, including myself, were able to get on radio. New forms of singer-songwriters developed out of that.

It's a very artistic process to translate and adapt a book into a series.

I know I'm not the kind of person who's gonna wind up a walking jukebox, like many rock 'n' roll artists. They just play their hits and that's it. That doesn't appeal to me.