I think I first realized I wanted to be in country music and be an artist when I was 10. And I started dragging my parents to festivals, and fairs, and karaoke contests, and I did that for about a year before I came to Nashville for the first time. I was 11 and I had this demo CD of me singing Dixie Chicks and Leanne Rimes songs.

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.

There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand – good heavens! – that’s what I really call troublesome.

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.

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.

Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality.

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.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

Here in England, everyone’s a pop star, innit, whereas in America they believe in the term artist.

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.

Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing.

The artist in me cries out for design.

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

I decided to sell my drawings. However, I didn’t want people to buy my drawings because the professor of physics isn’t supposed to be able to draw – isn’t that wonderful – so I made up a false name.

I don’t have stylistic loyalty. That’s why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.

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

The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.

I’ve never thought about any kind of prejudice about women in country music because I never felt like it affected me. I was fortunate enough to come about in a time when I didn’t feel that kind of energy at all, and it was always my theory that if you want to play in the same ballgame as the boys, you’ve got to work as hard as them.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure – that of being Salvador Dali.

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

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

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

You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they’re not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don’t care about money, and that’s not my problem.

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.

What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don’t really think that hard.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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. That is what we do.

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you’re going to be a second-rate artist.

There’s been a lot of talk about Jack White wanting to work with me, and I’ve always admired him, and of course, he lives in Nashville, too.

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 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.

I didn’t die young. So I am very lucky. There are other artists and people that didn’t survive certain things… people can imagine that I did the most dangerous, and I did the worst… for many reasons, I shouldn’t be here.

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.

Kitty Wells was the first and only Queen of Country Music, no matter what they call the rest of us. She was a great inspiration to me as well as every other female singer in the country music business. In addition to being a wonderful asset to country music, she was a wonderful woman.

I really wanted to be a model when I was little. I loved photography, and I loved being on camera. But I was short and chubby, so I couldn’t. Anyway, being an artist is way more interesting than just being a model because it’s about you and what you want to be. You’re not being treated like a clothes hanger.

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.

I’m a serious aficionada of country music – Reba McEntire, Toby Keith, Montgomery Gentry. I’ve even written some songs. They haven’t done anything of mine yet. But it’s only a matter of time.

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

I like Cardi B!

I can only say the first thing that pops into my mind is I remember, years ago, seeing kind of a has-been country singer working – when I first moved to Nashville – in a bar in a Holiday Inn.

If you talk bad about country music, it’s like saying bad things about my momma. Them’s fightin‘ words.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

My definition of country music is really pretty simple. It’s when someone sings about their life and what they know, from an authentic place.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

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

Seeing a live Kenny Chesney show, you know what you’re going to get. You know it’s going to be an all-day party.

I love being a part of the country-music community.

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.

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.

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.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.

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