Art Quotes

All forms of madness, bizarre habits, awkwardness in society, general clumsiness, are justified in the person who creates good art.

~ Roman Payne

The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.The job is not the work.

~ Seth Godin

I am no longer afraid of becoming lost, because the journey back always reveals something new, and that is ultimately good for the artist.

~ Billy Joel

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The Earth is Art, The Photographer is only a Witness

~ Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Art is making something out of nothing, and selling it.

~ Frank Zappa

Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue. . . .

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.

~ Claude Monet

Artistic talent is a gift from God and whoever discovers it in himself has a certain obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it.

~ John Paul Ii

Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. … It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see.

~ Ann Patchett

It is quite possible--overwhelmingly probable, one might guess--that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology

~ Noam Chomsky

After a few months in my parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of these things are dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations.

~ David Sedaris

Treat a work of art like a prince: let it speak to you first.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

I force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.

~ Marcel Duchamp

I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my life. Some of them. Not all.

~ Neil Gaiman

A blank canvas...has unlimited possibilities.

~ Stephanie Perkins

The more you love,the more love you have to give.It's the only feeling we have which is infinite...

~ Christina Westover

Everyone has their own ways of expression. I believe we all have a lot to say, but finding ways to say it is more than half the battle.

~ Criss Jami

Art is the child of nature in whom we trace the features of the mothers face.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It's easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It's a lot more difficult to perform one.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.

~ Andy Warhol

Writers remember everything...especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar.Art consists of the persistence of memory.

~ Stephen King

Creativity is an act of defiance.

~ Twyla Tharp

The criminal is the creative artist, the detective only the critic.

~ G.k. Chesterton

I just do art because I’m ugly and there’s nothing else for me to do.

~ Andy Warhol

The art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.

~ Rebecca Solnit

Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.

~ Charles Baudelaire

We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.

~ Henry James

Because when you love something, you want to do it all the time, even if no one is paying you for it. At least that's how I felt about drawing.

~ Meg Cabot

There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.

~ Marie Antoinette

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

~ Oscar Wilde

I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I’ve lost.

~ Nan Goldin

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.

~ Stephen King

All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?

~ Banksy

Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart..

~ Pablo Casals

Talent is cheap, dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life.

~ Irving Stone

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

~ Oscar Wilde

The loner who looks fabulous is one of the most vulnerable loners of all.

~ Anneli Rufus

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

~ Henry Ward Beecher

...as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch.

~ Donna Tartt