Felix Mendelssohn Quotes

As artists, it's tempting to forget the audience's needs. Too often, we're self-centered and self-indulgent in what we share with the world. We're prideful, only showing what we deem as perfect or what we think our peers will respect.

There are all kinds of pretensions about art, but I'm just a guy who sings for his supper.

I do feel bad when my films don't do well, but I respect audiences' verdict because they know well which films to support. If they don't like a film, we should accept it.

A true artist is one who, even after doing a lot, he reminds himself that he hasn't done anything.

Try to take your vision and ego as far away from the song as possible. Give as much respect as you can to the song and the initial inspiration.

First and foremost an artist should pay homage to grandness, honour and bow to it, and not try to extinguish the fierce flames of such, in an attempt to have his own feeble light shine brighter. When one isn't able to acknowledge greatness, I would really want to know how he endeavours to make me experience it.

Great artists are modest almost as seldom as they are faithful to their wives.

I have been sent more ridiculous press notices. People are frequently comparing my work with Van Gogh... I do hope I do not get bloated and self-satisfied. When proud feelings come I step up over them to the realm of work, to the thing I want, the liveness of the thing itself.

My priciple is, the artist shall put forth, humbly & lovingly, without bitterness, the very best & highest that is within him,utterly regardless of contemporary criticism.

Try to find the right balance of keeping things exciting and treating your audience with respect, and also treating yourself as an artist with respect.

An artist is above all a human being, profoundly human to the core. If the artist can't feel everything that humanity feels, if the artist isn't capable of loving until he forgets himself and sacrifices himself if necessary, if he won't put down his magic brush and head the fight against the oppressor, then he isn't a great artist.

Naturally one would rather be a broad artist with power to evoke beauty from every phase of experience--but when one unmistakably isn't such an artist, there's no sense in bluffing and faking and pretending that one is.

I learned how difficult it is to be an artist. There are always compromises. The record company wants you to do this, your fans want you to do this, your family, you can't concentrate on your work. It's a hard thing to be an artist and not give up. That's why I have so much respect for people like Dylan and Neil Young and Tom Waits, because they keep at it. I have a new respect for a true artist.

To express himself well, the artist should be hidden. The trouble is that if an artist knows he has genius, he's done for. The only salvation is to work like a labourer, and not have delusions of grandeur.

I do feel like a fraud a lot of the time because I've never been interested in people who say 'I'm a writer', 'I'm an artist'. Too much is made of the role and not enough of the work. We are such a celebrity-driven age and a status-driven age, that the status becomes more important than the actual work.

It gives me no joy to be praised at the expense of a better artist, by someone who does not know the difference or who thinks me too vain to be aware of it myself.

Since I've started to star in pictures I have always managed to retain my singularity of purpose when I got into the business, which was to be an artist, as an actor, more than anything else. But to get the certain kind of role you want, you have to be in a certain position in the business and it's dog-eat-dog and it gets very hairy and you can lose your point of view sometimes.

I have a deep-seated distrust and even contempt for people who are driven by ambition to conquer the world … those who cannot control themselves and produce vast amounts of crap that no one cares about. I find it unattractive. I like the Zen artists: they’d do some work, and then they’d stop for a while.

While the space for artists and curators has increased enormously, maybe, just maybe, that's left room for too many people calling themselves artists and curators who are simply not up to the term.

I don't believe any real artists have ever been non-political. They may have been insensitive to this particular plight or insensitive to that, but they were political, because that's what an artist is-a politician.

People who don't know you, you don't know their motives. They smile at you all day, "Oh, that's great. You've done it again! You're the greatest!" And that's not good for an artist.

In America, we know to ignore artists if they're serious in any way.

The artist must try to raise the level of taste of the masses, not debase himself to the level of unformed and impoverished taste.

The artists who the world has always recognized as the greatest are those with the widest sympathy. The greatness of the great artist depends precisely on the width and the intensity of his sympathy.

Watteau is no less an artist for having painted a fascia board while Sainsbury's is no less effective a business for producing advertisements which entertain and educate instead of condescending and exploiting.