Artist Quotes - Page 31

I would let my fans and people looking from the outside looking in dictate that. But, in my mind I gotta treat myself like I'm the best and gotta strive to be better than what I am. So of course my work ethic and the way I think as a person and an artist I'll feel that way. But on a boasting level, you would never hear that come out my mouth.

The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes.

I needed to be pushed as an artist and as a person.

K. Dot was a kid who was trying to find himself in music, finding trends, um, bending towards - ready to bend towards what the industry was telling me to do and after you mature at a certain time in your life, you come into your own...your own niche, your own personality, not only as an artist but as a person.

Faith receiveth the promise, embraceth it, and comforteth the soul unspeakably with it. Faith is so great an artist in arguing and reasoning with the soul, that it will bring over the hardest heart that it hath to deal with. It will bring to my remembrance at once, both my vileness against God, and his goodness towards me; it will show me, that though I deserve not to breathe in the air, yet that God will have me an heir of glory.

All technical refinements discourage me. Perfect photography, larger screens, hi-fi sound, all make it possible for mediocrities slavishly to reproduce nature; and this reproduction bores me. What interests me is the interpretation of life by an artist. The personality of the film maker interests me more than the copy of an object.

Every artist is a walking business. Your marketing tools are your headshots and your reel. That's what people see that's what your out there pushing trying to get a rep and that isn't easy.

Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.

As far as being an African artist, my inspiration has been the fact that I'm a part of the generation that will put Nigerian African music on a global scale. It's been a long road for us, but I believe we're finally at that point where we can showcase our music to the world and get international recognition.

I was born in Suzhou, a city not very far from Shanghai. It's a very interesting town - there is a long artist's tradition there, especially during the Ming and Ching dynasties, which produced many, many scholars and painters and so forth. That's where my family lived for 600, 700 years.

The effort to see things without distortion takes something like courage and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he saw it for the first time.

Disco does work better with black artists or players. They just feel it more.

Caricature is rough truth.

It takes a long time to make a painter - even with a good artist's education - but without one it tries the patience of Job; it is a great thing if one does not go backward.

Where I come from revolution is the only creation, and the revolutionary the only artist.

Every true artist is at war with the world.

We create truths by describing, or by re-describing , our beliefs and observations. Our task, and the task of every artist and scientist, is to re-describe our inherited assumptions and invented fictions in order to create new paradigms for the future.

Artists are the people that no matter what, pick up the pen, pick up a paintbrush. They take the time to translate what is happening to create something that resonates deeply with the rest of the people that are caught in the middle of their own reality.

I had a lot of dates but I decided to stay home and dye my eyebrows.

Isn't life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?

To all the secret writers, late-night painters, would-be singers, lapsed and scared artists of every stripe, dig out your paintbrush, or your flute, or your dancing shoes. Pull out your camera or your computer or your pottery wheel. Today, tonight, after the kids are in bed or when your homework is done, or instead of one more video game or magazine, create something, anything. Pick up a needle and thread, and stitch together something particular and honest and beautiful, because we need it. I need it. Thank you, and keep going.

Take me, I am the drug; take me, I am hallucinogenic.

Even at this late date, I go into my studio, and I think 'Is this going to be it? Is it the end?' You see, nearly everything terrorizes me. When an artist loses that terror, he's through.

I wrote and produced millions and millions of selling records, so my publishing company alone was worth millions of dollars. I didn't have to work anymore in life because when the rappers started sampling... I'm the most sampled artist in history.

When a young artist is ready, one has to bring him into the limelight.