Now, as I understand it, the bards were feared. They were respected, but more than that they were feared. If you were just some magician, if you’d pissed off some witch, then what’s she gonna...

To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life.(Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935)

Most artists try to avoid cliches, but it’s pretty hard to avoid them if you yourself end up being one.

I had a dream about you. You were trying to perfect the art of sexual intercourse, and I offered you the use of one of my statues to practice on. Artists have to stick together,...

I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is...

When an artist finds, he finds without looking for it.

So many artists say they’re not aware of audience. For me is unbelievable.

I feel like my peers now are artists like Madonna and the Stones, Michael Jackson and Prince. These are people who were able to take their careers beyond the normal here-today-gone-tomorrow life span.

As useful as an unhappy artist. As useless as a happy philosopher.

Fueled by my inspiration, I ran across the room to steal the cup of coffee the bookshelf had taken prisoner. Lapping the black watery brew like a hyena, I tossed the empty cup aside. I...

I am an artist. Any artist knows that their creations, their pieces must express an array of human emotion and experience. From the juvenile and innocent, to the erotic and the dangerous, and everything in...

Collaborative workshops and writers’ peer groups hadn’t been invented when I was young. They’re a wonderful invention. They put the writer into a community of people all working at the same art, the kind of...

The reason people are so moved by art and why artists tend to take it all so seriously is that if they are real and true they come to the painting with everything they know...

My parents cultured me a lot and they introduced me to a lot of artists, a lot of their friends.

A magician with decreasing practice sessions will give defective performances.

There is no ready vocabulary to describe the ways in which artists become artists, no recognition that artists must learn to be who they are (even as they cannot help being who they are.) We...

I think we should throw money at artists, not at girls who take their clothes off because they made a bad choice in life.

Time and death: It’s the ultimate vision of an artist at the end of everything. It’s just what’s there. It was not something I planned to do.

In the music business, especially the country music business, every 10 years or so you’re going to have this changing of the guard, this wave of new artists that comes in.

Everything is an art, which must be mastered.

Bedtime is daytime, and we come into bloom after midnight.

I think artists need the freedom to fail and I gave myself that freedom.

If I could talk about it, I would not have to do it. I make art.

But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition— and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks...

Writing is like gardening. Planting, watering, and weeding are not enough. You have to prune if you want growth.

A performance does not capture or communicate with the mood and feelings of that very moment.

But you’re an artist. You don’t believe in decency and honesty and gratitude.

I’ve started confiding in people, other artists mostly, that I hate making ‘South Park,’ and I always have. It’s super stressful. I’m always miserable.

I spoke fire, laughed smoke, and madness spilled forth from my inspiration.

I think that what most artists are trying to do is trying to understand. I think what distinguishes creative people and/or artists from another type of person is perhaps a willingness to go headlong into...

It’s an artist’s right to rebel against the world’s stupidity.

Prog didn’t really go away. Just took a catnap in the late Seventies. A new generation of fans discovered it, and a whole new array of bands and solo artists took it on into the...

It is always as it was between Achilles and Homer: one person has the experience, the sensation, the other describes it. A real writer only gives words to the affects and experiences of others; he...

San Francisco has long been a leader in the arts, nurturing generations of painters, sculptors, poets, novelists, playwrights, film-makers, and performing artists and innovators of every kind.

The courage to dream, the courage to act.

I believe art prefers rules. For some artists, the worst thing you can do is say ‘Do whatever you want.’ Such permission can be terrifying. I know it is for me. Often it’s better if...

The visual arts will one day be king. The pop stars and celebrities soon to be forgotten.

I was at the Royal Art School. That was a preparatory school specially for art teachers. You see, it was not so much for the development of artists. But we had there terribly stiff training.

This is what it is to love an artist: The moon is always rising above your house. The houses of your neighbors look dull and lacking in moonlight. But he is always going away from...

It’s a funny relationship that makeup artists have. I always feel kind of like a dentist. People look at me and think of pain.

Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done.That would be you.

A lot of the hip hop artists don’t write music. They write words.

You can survive without artistry, but you cannot live without artistry.

Innocence was gone from all our acts. Our habitual state of rebellion became a serious political crime.

The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple — to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it.

Some artists are nervous – most of them are, to tell you the truth, and they have different ways of exhibiting that. Some of them are boisterous, some are really quiet.

Jacksonville has more creativity in its soup kitchens than any other community with an abundance of starving artists. I once sculpted a stale baguette into the shape of Stalin, and the art community was torn...

The most visible creators are those artists whose medium is life itself. The ones who express the inexpressible ~ without brush, hammer, clay, or guitar. They neither paint nor sculpt. Their medium is simply being....

Mediocrity-the artist’s hell.

I think artists are scared to have same-gendered pronouns in their writing, and I don’t think it’s because they’re scared to be out, because gay artists are visible, but they don’t want to alienate an...