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.

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

I’ve been asking myself: ‚Why put together these things – CDs, albums?‘ The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it’s artistically viable. It’s not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it’s not obvious or even conscious on the artists‘ part.

It’s an endless proving of myself, that I really am a musician, that I have something to offer in the room. That women can be musicians, women can be rock stars, women can be more than an objectified idea of a pop star.

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

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 came to California and got signed at a young age. And it’s not like you see in the movies, where you start rubbing shoulders with Timbaland and Pharrell, and you become a giant pop star.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

I like Cardi B!

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.

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.

I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn’t bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn’t have any brains. I didn’t know what I was doing there. That’s why I became an actor.

May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?

I’m no hillbilly singer.

Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.

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

I just genuinely feel that that’s what you do when you’re an artist: You stick up for the people around you.

We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm.

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.

I never dreamed of being a pop star when I was a child.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

Any artist, the work you do, if it’s a painting or if it’s a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else’s life. That’s what’s fun about sharing art.

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.

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.

Some of these Ivy League kids want to have it both ways. They want to be baby members of the 1 percent, which they most certainly are, and yet still portray themselves as the oppressed.

The biggest crime in England is to rise above your station. It’s fine to be a pop star. ‚Oh, it’s great, lots of fun, aren’t they sweet, these pop stars! But to think you have anything to say about how the world should work? What arrogance!‘

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

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

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.

Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.

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.

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

I don’t want to look sloppy, because then I feel sloppy.

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.

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

I don’t think a lot of people know personally who I am.

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

I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity, and that includes all kinds of parts.

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.

I hate being called an ‚icon.‘ I just don’t like it. That’s all there is to it.

Money is kind of a base subject. Like water, food, air and housing, it affects everything yet for some reason the world of academics thinks it’s a subject below their social standing.

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

I was not raised with wealth or resources or any social standing to speak of.

Don’t you love it that Prince doesn’t use Twitter? Don’t you think he’s somewhere on a unicorn?

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

God didn’t make a mistake when He made you. You need to see yourself as God sees you.

The artist in me cries out for design.

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

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.

Madonna and I are very different. Just saying. We’re very different. I wouldn’t make that comparison at all, and I don’t mean to disrespect Madonna: she’s a nice lady, and she’s had a fantastic, huge career – biggest pop star of all time.

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.

She is a peacock in everything but beauty.

I never wanted to perform and never proclaimed myself to be a performer.

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

I didn’t think it was special to be able to sing.

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 don’t think I ever thought of myself as Superman. But there were people who thought of me that way, and maybe I believed them a little.

You’ll never rise any higher than the way you see yourself.

I’ve always felt heroic about my life… As a child, I remember little girls in the playground moaning about how boys could do more than they could. I didn’t think that was the case at all. My parents didn’t treat me as a girl.

Might, could, would – they are contemptible auxiliaries.