I didn’t watch ‚The A-Team‘ movie. I’m an artist. You can’t re-paint a Rembrandt. You can’t duplicate that; I don’t care who you get.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

If you hear a voice within you say ‚you cannot paint,‘ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

I wasn’t allowed to go to movies when I was kid; my father was a minister. 101 Dalmatians and King of Kings, that was the extent of it.

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.

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.

Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.

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

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.

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

See, ‚A Time to Kill‘ was the one I got famous off of. Big ka-boom, over one weekend. After that, I did films that I really wanted to do.

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.

I paint; I draw and paint – I’ve been doing that since I was in third grade, drawing realistically and then changing to abstract art. That was my first creative thing before guitar or comedy.

I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.

It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to have to paint it.

With all due respect, the Mona Lisa is overrated.

Later on they send me to Hollywood. To make movies. It was all new to me. I was only 21 years old.

When I was 8 years old, I saw ‚Raiders of the Lost Ark‘ in Charlotte, North Carolina. I walked out of there and was so inspired. I loved the movie, and I knew I wanted to be that guy.

My work as an artist is completely separate from my work as a philanthropist.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

If my films make one more person miserable, I’ll feel I have done my job.

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

As an artist, as a brand, as a rapper, as a musician, you know you got a window and a lot of people, even an athlete; they don’t have no exit strategy. It’s just living in the false reality that it’s going to be like this forever.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

All the screen cowboys behaved like real gentlemen. They didn’t drink, they didn’t smoke. When they knocked the bad guy down, they always stood with their fists up, waiting for the heavy to get back on his feet. I decided I was going to drag the bad guy to his feet and keep hitting him.

An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.

I am an artist, and I have the ability and the free will to choose the way the world will envision me.

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

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

There’s no difference between movies and television. None at all. Except in a lot of cases, television’s much better than movies.

Every movie I make teaches me something. That’s why I keep making them.

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.

Life guided me to being a bodyguard, protecting people, then in the movies, so I’m happy with everything because basically all I ever wanted to do was be a good son and take care of my mother.

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

I love Wiz Khalifa.

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.

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I’m watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they’re painted, could be art. With music, you’re a little bit limited, of course, because it’s only audio.

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.

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.

Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants to be recognized. So do I.

Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don’t think so… I have to compete with popular culture, including TV, magazines, movies and video games.

I’m not a film buff. I don’t watch a lot of movies.

My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

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.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

When I was a boy, I always saw myself as a hero in comic books and in movies. I grew up believing this dream.

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

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

I’m rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it’s no longer his… I just see what people make of it.

I think the form, the Hollywood movie, I think the quality is obviously always going to be there and I think that the question of taste, there’s always a question of taste.

Movies were invented for Jimmy Cagney, and he was invented for the movies. A perfect match.

It is a joy to be an artist, but it doesn’t mean very much unless that work is somehow useful in some way and contributes to others.

Movies are fun, but they are no cure for cancer.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

I’d been making music that was intended to be like painting, in the sense that it’s environmental, without the customary narrative and episodic quality that music normally has. I called this ‚ambient music.‘ But at the same time I was trying to make visual art become more like music, in that it changed the way that music changes.

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

I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.

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