Paul Simon Quotes

This image of wanting to be an artist - that I would in some way become an artist -was very strong. I knew for a long, long time that that's what I would be. But nothing I ever did seemed to bring me any nearer to the condition of being an artist. And I didn't know how to do it.

I started making art during high school but thought I lacked the talent to become a true artist.

No writer, painter, or actor - no artist - is ever handed a sharp knife (although a few people are handed almighty big ones; the name we give to the artist with the big knife is 'genius'), and we hone with varying degrees of zeal and aptitude.

I was always making things. Even though art was what I did every day, it didn't even occur to me that I would be an artist.

I would go to sketch groups and draw. I really enjoyed the subject matter, but I wasn't good at it.

Many times I asked myself, 'Who is a painter in your own eyes?'

For the most part, works of mine are untitled. There was a brief period where I had poetic titles for works, and they're embarrassing now. I think, for the most part, it's not something that I have talent for.

But I'm not an artist. Maybe an artist with a small a.

I guess if you take yourself seriously as an artist there starts either the problem or the beauty of doing good artwork.

When I was younger I thought I was an artist, and inspiration would just come to me.

I really took filmmaking very seriously... It was an honor and then a crutch also, because at a young age, I was like, I guess I'm a serious filmmaker. I never set out to be a serious filmmaker. I just set out to make movies.

I still haven't made a film that defines who I am.

The problem turned out to be that I never was that kind of an artist.

I started writing songs, I guess, when I was about 13 or 14, but I didn't know if they were good enough yet or anything.

For the longest time, I didn't even want to admit I was serious about music. Before the Shins, I would tell myself, 'Oh, I'm going to figure something out someday.' I had this romantic vision of being this old dude maybe making guitars or something.

I constantly try to reinvent my sensibilities and my ideas. I enjoy some of the satisfaction that I get when I feel good about what I've done. But the process is quite lonely and quite painful.

Every good painter paints what he is.

I think I always knew that I would do something with art because it was the one thing that I knew I was really good at.

Art has been good for my soul. And it's been good for my brain. I think I'm a better painter now than I was a musician growing up. You struggle to see things and translate an image through your hands to a canvas.

I have been drawing and creating visual works my entire life, as long as I can remember.

I don't have any other skills. Some artists say that to mean that their embodied passion for art gave them no choice. I say it, very specifically, to say that I really didn't have any other options.

I don't really have a historical overview of my work at all. I'm not an art historian. I don't see that there's this period and that period.

Maybe I'm a dream artist, as they call it.

I have had an interest in art since childhood. I loved to draw as a child and still do.

I'm still getting used to being called a composer. A poseur, maybe.