Robert Duvall Quotes

Competitions are for horses, not artists.

I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they're good or there because they're lucky.

I could, of course, have written about the film world and the jealousy there and the frequent belief that others don't have talent. But, for some reason, it just struck me to write about art.

Art is a gift and if nobody hears it, that doesn't make it any less of a gift.

The 10 or 12 artists I have known really well all my life are at least as competitive as professional athletes. They may express it in slightly different terms, but you look at the Jackson Pollocks et al., and they are as interested in wall space in the galleries as Joe Montana is in the percentage of completed passes. So the notion that symphonic conducting, or stage play, or pure art, is not a competitive business is real bullshit.

I think that's why I became good at art. It was something that I could do that I could be really proud of.

Art is good but it isn't the best.

Is an artist much more than a beggar?

I don't use the word 'artists' lightly.

The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it.

There are lots of artists I respect and admire.

All people are struggling to be creative in some way, and the artist is the one who has succeeded in this task of life.

I'm surprised when the work appears beautiful, and very pleased. And I think work can be very good and very successful without being able to call it beautiful, although I'm not clear about that. The work is good when it has a certain completeness; and when it's got a certain completeness, then it's beautiful.

As an artist, I've been very fortunate.

There's only one reason for my whole life, and that's art. Nothing else counts; nothing else gives me pleasure; nothing else gives me satisfaction.

The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.

Art is difficult. It's not entertainment.

One day I would like to have my own art show.

Everything around a writer, or musician in the record business, probably everything in all the United States or in all of western civilization, is about competition.

I just consider being one of the luckiest people in the sense that creativity came to me and it flowed.

I love people where, at the end of the day, they'll pick up a paintbrush and paint clouds. They can physically make things.

Somebody said us artists have trouble with success because art is derived from struggle. I disagree with that, because truely doing your art is success, whether you make money from it or not.

As long as I can remember, I was drawing or trying to create something.

Art depends on luck and talent.

My older sister achieved her dream of being an artist. She's an illustrator living in Manhattan.