Artist Quotes

Amazingly, I've been sort of an anomaly in the music industry. I feel like I've been able to exist as kind of a throwback artist.

~ Jewel

R&B is the one thing that has influenced every kind of music. Every artist that there is, from those that are sung the most to Adele - you know, she was so influenced by so many R&B artists and soul music - it's clear in her writing that that's where it comes from.

~ Babyface

They told me that they are starting a classic label, and wanted me to be the first artist. So I signed, and am producing myself, and writing my own music, but I'm their first artist on their classic label. And I have creative control.

~ Teena Marie

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

~ André Maurois

From the age of six I wanted to be an artist. At that point I meant a painter, but it turned out what I really meant was I was someone who was very interested in watching the world and making copies of it.

~ Reynolds Price

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.

~ Jimmy Carter

When I first met Big, we were both at a 'Bad Boy' family photo shoot. I was kind of familiar with the name Biggie Smalls, but I really wasn't that much into hip-hop at the time, so I really didn't know that was him. He said he didn't even know I was an artist on 'Bad Boy.'

~ Faith Evans

I see only one requirement you have to have to be a director or any kind of artist: rhythm. Rhythm, for me, is everything. Without rhythm, there's no music. Without rhythm, there's no cinema. Without rhythm, there's no architecture.

~ Alejandro González Iñárritu

Even though I build buildings and I pursue my architecture, I pursue it as an artist. I deliberately keep a tiny studio. I don't want to be an architectural firm. I want to remain an artist.

~ Maya Lin

The last thing a young artist should do in poetry or any other field is think about what's in style, what's current, what are the trends. Think instead of what you like to read, what do you admire, what you like to listen to in music. What do you like to look at in architecture? Try to make a poem that has some of those qualities.

~ Robert Pinsky

I think the artistic side of architecture was natural to me. My mother was an artist and a poet.

~ I. M. Pei

The artist himself may not think he is religious, but if he is sincere his sincerity in itself is religion.

~ Emily Carr

The best thing is to always keep honest people around, because when you have a bunch of yes men around that know that you're making a mistake but let you go on with it, that's when it ruins your mind state as an artist.

~ Kendrick Lamar

In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare's plays, the first thing the artist has to settle is the best date for the drama. This should be determined by the general spirit of the play more than by any actual historical references which may occur in it.

~ Oscar Wilde

The best artist has that thought alone Which is contained within the marble shell The sculptor's hand can only break the spell To free the figures slumbering in the stone.

~ Michelangelo

Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.

~ Jackson Pollock

Any tool can be used for good or bad. It's really the ethics of the artist using it.

~ John Knoll

It's good as an artist to always remember to see things in a new, weird way.

~ Tim Burton

I set my sights upon becoming the kind of artist who would make a contribution to art history.

~ Judy Chicago

What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the Earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos.

~ Anselm Kiefer

History speaks to artists. It changes the artist's thinking and is constantly reshaping it into different and unexpected images.

~ Anselm Kiefer

I think the greatest hip-hop artist of all time is Jay-Z, without a doubt. He just keeps amazing me with his performance, and since '96, that guy has been producing at least one hit every summer and every winter. That's a pretty good resume.

~ John Cena

There's so much about Dolly Parton that every female artist should look to, whether it's reading her quotes or reading her interviews or going to one of her live shows. She's been such an amazing example to every female songwriter out there.

~ Taylor Swift

I see hip-hop as going in a self-managing place. It's very culturally controlled and artist-controlled. It's not really based on a label anymore. Everything is pretty much in the control of the artist. Which is amazing.

~ Travis Scott

I went to the University of Minnesota, and I met this amazing artist named Cameron Boothe there who was in World War I, who studied with Hans Hoffman in Munich.

~ James Rosenquist

I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.

~ Napoléon Bonaparte

With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.

~ Norman Mailer

For an artist, a good place to be is you have some kind of influence and power to get things done, but in your essence you remain a nomad or a soldier facing a difficulty to be overcome.

~ Cai Guo-Qiang

In many museums, you see one of this and one of that. You gain an understanding of what Abstract Expressionism or Minimalism is, but you aren't given the chance to appreciate the mind of an artist.

~ Robert J. Fisher

'The Voice' gave me a chance to show people the side of me that is an artist. People didn't know what that would look like or sound like. It allowed people to see that potential.

~ Judith Hill

Anytime that another artist or a critic that is well-respected says something nice about you, you're always thankful and hope that you can live up to that.

~ Chris Stapleton

I know how I want to operate as an artist. And that is by having an honest, genuine dialogue about this kind of screwed up journey I've had that I'm so thankful for.

~ Mary Lambert

As an artist, you're thankful to get a shot at a story more than once, because it doesn't happen all the time. Whether you talk about 'Hamlet' or 'Death of a Salesman,' you always want to see what the next group of actors will do.

~ Kenny Leon

The artist is chosen by God to fulfill his commands and must never be overwhelmed by public opinion.

~ Albrecht Dürer

What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.

~ David Hockney

As an artist, the more experience, the better the creation. I'm a very positive person.

~ Psy

To me, the job of the artist is to provide a useful and intelligent vocabulary for the world to be able to articulate feelings they experience everyday, and otherwise wouldn't have the means to express in a meaningful and useful way.

~ Mos Def

I've realized that I love all forms of music and get excited when any artist goes crazy and creates something that is an experience.

~ Tom Delonge

I left Jamaica for a while, because as an artist I need to experience different things, see the world, have different energies. Living in one place is not good for me.

~ Ziggy Marley

To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this matter for experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soul grasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists.

~ Arnold Bennett