Best 8185 quotes in «artist quotes» category

I was an observer. I liked to listen rather than openly express myself. This trait is something that I've retained over the years.

I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I'm homosexual. In the way of circumstances and background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint.

I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I'd draw a big ram's head, really messy. I'd never win painting contests. I remember losing to a guy who did a perfect Spiderman.

I was a martial artist. So, for me to be able to do all of the fights is a blast. It's so fun. It's like dancing, but more bad-ass. I really enjoy doing it.

I was a runaway girl from France who married an American and moved to New York City. Im not sure I would have continued as an artist had I remained in Paris because of the family setup.

I was a scam artist in high school for a while.

I was...attacked for being a pasticheur, chided for composing "simple" music, blamed for deserting "modernism," accused of renouncing my "true Russian heritage." People who had never heard of, or cared about, the originals cried "sacrilege": "The classics are ours. Leave the classics alone." To them all my answer was and is the same: You "respect," but I love.

I was a very introverted individual and this became an important outlet for me to express myself, to communicate, to take positions, make statements, take a stand and so forth. But I never really thought I had much a future at all So the thing that I had to do was to really go inward and really work super hard in the hope that someday it would pay off. And in using that term I don't mean necessarily money, but just the fact that I would have more depth and dimension both as a human being and as an artist.

I was a student at Harvard, and that's where I learned about so-called avant-garde music. Jackson Pollock, abstract expressionism and painting were well known at this time.

I was at a time of my life of making choices, I suppose: am I a writer, am I a visual artist? And when I was a teenager. I thought I would be a film-maker. Am I a musician? If so, what kind of musician am I?

I was been raised to believe I was an artist. I believed what my parents said and fulfilled it, like a prophecy.

I was being generous. Gia Coppola wasn't even a filmmaker at that time, but I asked her to do it, because I believed in her as an artist. And because I wanted a woman's take on the material. The book Palo Alto is very male-centric, but Gia carved out a bunch of the female characters, and brought them to the fore in the movie. And the project was richer for it.

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.

I was backstage at the House of Blues in L.A where I was about to perform, and Stevie Wonder and Prince turned up at my dressing room together! Stevie started beat boxing and Prince started singing one of my songs, all of a sudden it was like I was in a cypher with these incredible artists.

I was being an artist, being sensitive and technical as artists are. I'm sure Leonardo Da Vinci did that. Artists don't always feel the same as others feel about their work.

I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and am a product of a family that were jazz aficionados and also very interested in progressive politics. And so I had a lot of artists and musicians in my home. Lots of Latin music, folk, and jazz and blues, bluegrass-type of stuff. Painters and stuff like that.

I was constantly being around artists and Bohemian types.

I was exposed to the arts, but there was no one in my family who was an artist.

I was dominated, soul, brain, and power by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream.

I was forced to be an artist and a CEO from the beginning, so I was forced to be like a businessman because when I was trying to get a record deal, it was so hard to get a record deal on my own that it was either give up or create my own company.

I was forgetting that an artist also just stares at a piece of paper or canvas all day. It somehow never occurred to me to connect these two diverse creative modes.

I was given the gifts of the artist, and the trouble that goes with them: So I have that blessing, and there was never a time thatI questioned it or doubted it.... For forty years, I wanted to jump out of windows.

I was in a group show at a museum in Torino, a lot of American artists installed in a floor of this museum. Another floor of the museum houses the most refined collection of arte povera in the world, which is perfectly selected and perfectly installed. I remember being struck by the contrast between the Italian works and the American. I would say the hallmarks of the Italian style are a poetical connection to nature and to materiality, materials, and exquisite taste. On contrast, the American work was essentially a bunch of bad-tempered, complaining kids.

I was in Nashville and I was having just the most amazing time there, discovering who I was as an artist because that is such a music city. Everyone there is so friendly and inspiring and down to jam.

I was interested in [Hunter S. Thompson novels]. The rebel in me fell in love with it, and the artist in me was confused by it, and interested and turned on. Ever since, his work has meant different things to me, at different times, and I still get new meaning out of it and appreciate it, in a different way. His work is very visceral, and you can take from it what you want, in various moments of your life.

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.

I was interested in the ways that artists responded to totalitarianism - the Czech Jazz Section, Romanian absurdist theatre, Brecht's alienation effect. The anything-goes, anarchic qualities of jazz and Surrealism seemed to offer a way to cross some of the forbidden frontiers of Eastern Europe.

I was invited to photograph Hollywood. They asked me what I would like to photograph. I said, Ugly men.

I was involved with the anti-apartheid movement through my work as an artist and also through my political commitment.

I was just, like, not at all the office type; I was the artist type.

I was keen to challenge this vernacular as the role of the photojournalist was changing, and images were becoming urgent and more succinctly linguistic. This is why I moved to publishing artists who were challenging the veracity of both the medium and the profession through their works.

I was judgmental of artists who were exploring their sexuality, and I thought, Why are they doing that? They don't have to. They've got a good voice.

I was listening to Jimi Hendrix; I just admire his artistry and creativity as an artist.

I was more than just a moody artist.

I was lucky enough to first meet Elvis at his house in Bel Air and he used to invite different artists, singers and musicians, to come and jam with him at his house.

I was lucky enough to be given books that weren't top sellers; books that were kind of under the radar

I was mostly surprised by the rap artists, actually, that were influenced by Sabbath. That was a surprise. But it's very nice and I'm very honoured. It's nice to know after 27 years now that what I said in the first place has stuck, and that was the belief in it.

I was never shielded from the realities of what it meant to be an artist and that made me afraid to be an artist because I wanted to know that my life was secure.

I was never the one that really wanted to be a solo artist, I was always in groups.

I wasn't really sold on being an artist until high school, my senior year. I was going to do the college thing originally.

I wasn't thinking of competing with any artists as such, I was more thinking of being among them, and sharing thoughts with them; like sharing views, ideas, etc.

I wasn't allowed to grow as an artist. My albums were nicer to look at than to listen to.

I wasn't sure I was an artist, so I thought maybe I just was throwing ideas out for people to consider.

I was playing pretty boys and these angelic roles like Nicholas Nickleby and all that stuff. And I was like, 'What am I doing? This isn't who I am, as a man or an artist.' I had to overcome people's belief that I was too pretty to be a badass.

I was poking fun at myself most of all.

I was one of two first cultural exchange artists been allowed to go to the West. I knew it was such a rare opportunity and I had to treasure it by giving my utter most to achieve excellence.

I was one of the first artists to have a YouTube account, if not the first. I joined two months after the site launched.

I was poor. When you're poor you work, and when you're rich you expect somebody to hand it to you. So I think being reasonably poor is very good for people.

I was so fortunate to sing and work with so many amazing performers and artists.

I was so mad I wasn't sitting at the stadium watching it [Prince' 2007 Super Bowl performance] in person. So when Prince came back to the box where I would have been after he performed, he said to my makeup artist, "Where's Stevie?" She said, "She's sick, and she was told by our manager that she would have to walk across the football field when the game was over in the mud and try to find a limo, so she made the decision that she couldn't do that." He was not happy that I wasn't there, and now today I'm not happy about it because I should have gone and I should have walked in that mud for him.