An artist must learn to be nourished by his passions and by his despairs.
Sometimes I think as an artist you tend to go toward the heartbreak and the sadness because those are the deepest and heaviest emotions you can pull out as an entertainer and as a singer.
The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.
Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.
Don't hoard the past. Don't cherish anything. Burn it. The artist is the phoenix who burns to emerge.
An age is best revealed by its artists of the second rank.
A man is an artist only at certain moments, by an effort of will. Objects have the same appearance for everybody.
I imagine if Spotify becomes something that people are willing to pay for, then I'm sure iTunes will just create their own service, and they're actually fair to artists.
As an artist, you don't think about the parabola or the arc you're describing or where you're going to ultimately end up, you're just kind of crawling around, seeing what's out there.
When a young artist asks me a question, I want to do what I can to give them an answer if I have it within me. I know what I know. I won't make up stuff. But if it's something I've been through, I'll share my experiences and tell them the truth.
My characters have undergone the same process of simplification as the colors. Now that they have been simplified, they appear more human and alive than if they had been represented in all their details.
Most artists like to think of themselves as rugged individualists, as independent characters.
Artists should always think of themselves as cosmic instruments for storytelling.
Dada is like your hopes: nothing like your paradise: nothing like your idols: nothing like your heroes: nothing like your artists: nothing like your religions: nothing
One can easily tell that the creator of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel was above all a sculptor
The essential of painting is that 'something', that 'ethereal glue,' that 'intermediary product' which the artist exudes with all his creative being and which he has the power to place, to encrust, to impregnate into the pictorial matter of the painting.
What is a portrait good for, unless it shows just how the subject was seen by the painter? In the old days before photography came in a sitter had a perfect right to say to the artist: "Paint me just as I am. " Now if he wishes absolute fidelity he can go to the photographer and get it.
My sisters were going out with artists and poets, and eventually it was the creative world which attracted me.
What guided Chaplin was the proper protection of self-interest (or craziness). So Chapling, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mark Pickford, with DW Griffith and William S Hart, made an alliance, called United Artists, whereby they would own a distribution company that would market their pictures, allowing them a greater return than if they leased the movies to some outside distributor.
In my day, the only people who achieved real independence were my father, Mary Pickford and Charles Chaplin, who, with D. W. Griffith, formed United Artists. Other than that, everybody belonged to the big studios. They had no say in their own careers.