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

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.

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

I don’t really have a gimmick or a ‚thing.‘ I’m one of the few artists who gets to be himself every day.

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.

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

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

My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the ‚light‘ and never mentioned the other, then as an artist, I would be a liar.

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

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.

Working with J Balvin has undoubtedly been an unparalleled experience.

I know there’s a farmer out there somewhere who never wants a PC and that’s fine with me.

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 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.

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.

Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.

The original reason to start the project, which was that the Germans were a danger, started me off on a process of action, which was to try to develop this first system at Princeton and then at Los Alamos, to try to make the bomb work.

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

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.

I’ve gotten used to being Frank Ocean.

Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It’s a black wall. It’s a thief.

I like Cardi B!

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

I don’t care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.

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

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.

Every artist wants something different out the game.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

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

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

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.

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.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

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

I can’t deny that label-support gave me a leg up – though not every successful artist needs it.

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

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

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

It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

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

‚Do you spell it with a ‚V‘ or a ‚W‘?‘ inquired the judge. ‚That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my Lord‘.

If I was just a fan of music, I would think that I was the number one artist in the world.

I think of myself more as a sportsman than I do an artist.

I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

I don’t like two stories. I like one story. I never grew up with stairs. I like to stick to what I know.

The memory of that scene for me is like a frame of film forever frozen at that moment: the red carpet, the green lawn, the white house, the leaden sky. The new president and his first lady.

Glorious bouquets and storms of applause are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys.

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.