Artist Quotes

Do not turn the superior eye of critical passivity upon these efforts .... We must not be ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint-box.

We have a lot of secondary market problems in the U.K.; it's really bad there. And lots of artists are starting to participate in it, because they put the tickets up at a certain price, then the tickets get marked up by the secondary sellers, and someone else gets twice as much as you.

I don't really count myself as a very sophisticated businessperson. I'm a creative artist. All I know from business I've picked up along the way.

Because artists can be extremely eccentric and insane, and unfortunately, the people they hurt the most are the people that are closest to them.

There were a lot of choices to make and I always picked artist. I never once picked doctor, lawyer, firemen or something like that. It was always artist.

All I can do is say I smell a rat. I don't know where it is or what kind of rat it is, but as an artist, I can express how. But I couldn't responsibly stand up and tell people which way to go, because then I'm just as guilty as the people who are telling everybody else what to do and where to go.

I do support artists standing by their beliefs and walking with integrity. We have to find a better way to commercially exploit music while giving artists their proper respect. This cannot be done while taking their contributions for granted or trying to control the scope of their growth and power through threats and fear tactics.

Over-commercialization and its resulting restrictions and limitations can be very damaging and distorting to the inherent nature of the individual. I did not deliberately abandon my fans, nor did I deliberately abandon any responsibilities.

As musicians and artists, it's important we have an environment - and I guess when I say environment, I really mean the industry, that really nurtures these gifts. Oftentimes, the machine can overlook the need to take care of the people who produce the sounds that have a lot to do with the health and well-being of society.

When you're young and everything dramatic is exciting, you start to believe that hype that, in order to be an artist, you have to suffer. I've graduated from that school.

I became a recording artist before I knew it. And I just - when I would listen to my old records, I'd just hear this young, extremely nervous fella that that made me want to run out of the room, you know, rather than listen to what he had to say.

You can't stay in your home town and play because the two people will get tired of seeing you.

I always wanted to be an artist, whatever that was, like other chicks want to be stewardesses. I read. I painted. I thought.

I was just 20 years old when I wrote Broken Arrow.

We used to want our artists to be cigarette-smoking bohemian outsiders who were gonna take risks that the rest of us wouldn't.

It's a tough pill to swallow, but if I was going to stand for something as an artist, and every time that had consequences I decided not to do it, that'd be pointless. I have to listen to people, and I always try to meet people with understanding.

If you truly believe that artists have a responsibility to uphold their liberal virtues by using their massive platforms, then those artists should be judged by the danger and inconvenience that they face for doing so, not by the rewards they receive for parroting consensus.

I got my diploma and then I thought I'd chance it as a freelance artist. I did it for a couple of months but then I thought, My God, I've done enough. The interest just wasn't there.

I'm only as good as my last word, my last hook, my last bridge.

You don't hear no artists from Compton showing vulnerability.