artist quotes

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.

Every artist was first an amateur.

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.

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.

There’s something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There’s something that invites all this obsessive behavior.

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 think that every artist – or anybody that’s in business – could benefit from a direct-to-consumer strategy, so I think that that applies to us as artists and content creators, too.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Working with J Balvin has undoubtedly been an unparalleled experience.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

The artist in me cries out for design.

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

I love Wiz Khalifa.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

An artist or a creative person of any kind goes about their work because it’s their path, it’s what excites them, it’s what aligns their soul with who they truly are, who they showed up to be.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

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

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’m the king of the anthems.

From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.

I think carrying moral baggage is very dangerous for an artist. If you have a duty, it’s to be true and not cover up the cracks.

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

I’ve just finished my 20th book this past year and I’m working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I’ll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research, I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I’m an artist too.

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.

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.

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.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

I like Cardi B!

Every artist wants something different out the game.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.