I’m a trained fine artist. I went to art school from the time I was 5 years old. I was, like, a prodigy out of Chicago. I’d been in national competitions from the age of 14.

I am Warhol. I am the No. 1 most impactful artist of our generation. I am Shakespeare in the flesh.

The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.

To be in any way a positive contribution, that’s all anybody wants to be. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. I wanted to be an artist, be a mother. You want to feel that in your life you’ve been of use, in whatever way that comes out.

I respect Drake not only as a creative person but as a business mind as well. I think Drake’s important.

My paintings have gotten to be pretty popular and I’ve taken a little bit more interest in painting the last few years. In fact, my novel that I wrote not too long ago, ‚The Hornet’s Nest,‘ I painted the cover picture for it and I do a good bit of painting now.

It seemed like a very small possibility for me to become an artist. I didn’t have the need to be on the stage; I didn’t feel the need to be heard. I just needed to write.

I’m a huge fan of R. Kelly’s. He’s a musical genius and probably the most prolific artist of the generation before mine.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

Chicago gave me more music than any other city in America.

I never think about myself as an artist working in this time. I think about it in macro.

My mother encouraged me to be artistic. It was written in a contract at an early age that I would be an artist.

I think it’s important as an artist to never forget where you’re from.

I think I’ve committed the one really bad English crime, which is I’ve risen above my station. I was supposed to be a pop star, and suddenly I’m claiming that I’m an artist of some kind.

That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward.

My mother was born in Baltimore, and before her marriage, she was an artist and teacher of art.

When I was nine years old, living on the south side of Chicago, my father was a minister and my mother used to scrub floors. I had seven brothers and four sisters. I told my mama, ‚One of these days I’m going to be big and strong and buy you a beautiful house.‘ That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life, is to take care of my mother.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

The artist part of me always wants to be appreciated. I read every review. But I never wanted to seek validation by awards or anything controlled by politics.

Being an artist doesn’t just mean you have a song. That doesn’t make you an artist. The word ‚artist‘ means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists – Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West – are doing the most.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

I’ve gotten used to being Frank Ocean.

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

I think business has to be stupider. I want to do really straightforward, stupid business – just talk to me like a 4-year-old. And I refuse to negotiate. I do not negotiate. I can collaborate. But I’m an artist, so as soon as you negotiate, you’re being compromised.

As an entrepreneur, as an investor, I’m trying to be as educated as I can to where the progression of technological capability is going and what it does to these different categories that, me as an artist and an influencer, I can get involved and bring value.

Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairytale artist.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‚the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.‘ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‚Artist.‘

I was going to go to a four-year college and be an anthropologist or to an art school and be an illustrator when a friend convinced me to learn photography at the University of Southern California. Little did I know it was a school that taught you how to make movies! It had never occurred to me that I’d ever have any interest in filmmaking.

Every album, I make big records. I’m going to always make an anthem. That’s what I do.

The thing about being an artist today is you get to develop right in front of people’s eyes before you even put out an album.

Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is.

The only really committed artist is he who, without refusing to take part in the combat, at least refuses to join the regular armies and remains a freelance.

I subscribe to the myth that an artist’s creativity comes from torment. Once that’s fixed, what do you draw on?

I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

Every artist wants something different out the game.

In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that.

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

What I’ve discovered is that in art, as in music, there’s a lot of truth-and then there’s a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It’s the moment that the audience falls in love.

Well, in order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times.

A record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

I love Wiz Khalifa.

I’ve said this time and again: My greatest concern coming into the White House was making sure my girls came out whole and normal, and decent and kind, just like I would expect them to if we were living on the South Side of Chicago. And it takes work to keep White House life normal for the kids.

A solution built by an artist serves the artist more than the solution the capitalist comes up with.

I want to be an artist, not… a celluloid aphrodisiac.

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too – eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko’s, Fatburger, Subway – I was a sandwich artist – and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.

Fans are my favorite thing in the world. I’ve never been the type of artist who has that line drawn between their friends and their fans. The line’s always been really blurred for me. I’ll hang out with them after the show. I’ll hang out with them before the show. If I see them in the mall, I’ll stand there and talk to them for 10 minutes.

I’m no hillbilly singer.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul.

I do love being in my studio. Especially at night.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

I’m the king of the anthems.

I performed in a bowling alley before while people were still bowling. Cut the check, and I will perform anywhere.