Hubert Selby Jr. Quotes

I don't paint to live, I live to paint.

Color possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter.

I don't like to say I have given my life to art. I prefer to say art has given me my life.

You have to give every portion of yourself to it. As an artist, that is just what you do - because we love it - we were born to do it.

I know how difficult it is to make a career in the arts, but even if you don't make a career of it, don't lose it as a hobby. Artists often end up in jobs that have nothing to do with their art. But that side needs to be fulfilled - don't give it up.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

Being an artist is celebrating life.

An artist is completely amoral in that he will rob, beg, borrow, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

The real artist while he paints does not think of the sale, only of the need to make a beautiful living thing.

An artist might be attracted to hedonism, but of course an artist is not a hedonist. He's a worker, always.

What experience has shown me is that it takes your life to become an artist.

An artist who dedicates his life to art, burdens his art with his life, and his life with his art.

What's any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What's left of the man when the work's done but a shambles of apology.

In a lot of the art world, you have to present yourself as you know what you're doing at a young age. Music gave me another outlet. The 'no wave' bands were such an inspiration; it felt so free - once you start doing it, it's hard to stop. But I can't get away from art. It comes back around. I wouldn't be true to myself if I didn't pursue it.

Throughout the time in which I am working on a canvas I can feel how I am beginning to love it, with that love which is born of slow comprehension.

If it is the mark of the artist to love art before everything, to renounce everything for its sake, to think all the sweet human things of life well lost if only he may attain something, do some good, great work - then I was never an artist.

I'm not looking to be an artist to make money. I'm looking to be an artist.

My life is in the art that I make, and I'm very happy with it.

I finally got to the point where I decided I don't care if it's good art or bad art - it's what I do. I enjoy doing it, and people like it.

My whole life was absorbed with my art. I was known by my schoolmates as the kid who could draw.

I've never said, 'I live for art.'

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

If you're an artist, it's OK to put your money into your art. The advantage, in hindsight, is that you become the film, and the film becomes you; you breathe it.

I always knew that I was an artist. I never expected to be able to make a living.

But where there is no art show, I would still be painting.