Claude Monet Quotes

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

It began when I was so ill that there was a good chance of dying. I promised myself that if I survived I would never again pander to a magazine's requests or follow the ideas of art directors. I would only make images which were personal, which arose out of my own life.

One day I noticed that I could go on working my art motif no matter what the weather might be. I no longer needed the sun, for I took my light everywhere with me.

I'm all about freedom in art. I'm from Texas, so when someone tells you which way to ride your horse, you think 'I'll just go to a different ranch. You guys are riding it backwards anyway.

Art is really predicated upon the experiences that you've had in your life. You only have to share what you've consumed.

The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous.

There's obviously always danger in making music or art for art's sake. Even as Christians we can be guilty of that, being more about the art than the Artist who gave us this gift.

I make the music that I want to make and make the show that I want to make. If you like it, you come. If you don't like it, you don't have to.

Art is both creation and recreation. Of the two ideas, I think art as recreation or as sheer play of the human spirit is more important.

Art is the sex of the imagination.

I think it was Henry Moore who was asked where he got his ideas for his sculptures, and he said something like, "I continue to do as an adult the things I did as a child." I think that's what art is about.

And every good artist knows that the gift comes from somewhere else, and it's there for a reason, and that's to make the world a better place.

Art is about freedom of expression, and should not be molded to fit any propaganda or lofty ideal.

How much the work of an artist owes to an art movement to which he belongs can never be determined exactly, if only because the movement derives its character from the individual creations of its members.

The freedom to create is somehow linked with facility of access to those obscure regions below the conscious mind.

I went to South Africa - Durban, Cape Town, Johannesburg - and those were definitely the "I've arrived" shows. Outside of the money, the success, the accolades ... This is a place that we, in urban communities, never dream of. We never dream of Africa. Like, "Damn, this is the motherland." You feel it as soon as you touch down. That moment changed my whole perspective on how to convey my art.

Women are not children. We are not fragile little birds who can't cope with jokes, works of art, or controversial speakers.

I believe that if you're an artist, it's like a gift. If you can do this for a living and you can be involved in it, it's something that you can't ignore. It's the chance for you to have a voice and create something from yourself.

We're creators by permission, by grace as it were. No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something already existent, something which belongs to the whole world, and which, if he is an artist, he is compelled to give back to the world.

Good or bad, the one thing I can say about my art is, if I can quote Sinatra, I did it my way.

perfectionism is the enemy of art. Since art is essentially divine play, not dogged work, it often happens that as one becomes more professionally driven one also becomes less capriciously playful.

Any form of art is a form of power.

Obey the muse, Liz said. She's a fickle mistress.

Arts is like the power of now. When you're performing, when you're playing, when you're sculpting, painting, it's that moment. I'm in the moment of my life, and that's what I love to do.

Art comes from art: I remember going to the Matisse show and seeing how Matisse had taken one of his own paintings, worked from it and transformed it, and that had led on to the next one and the next.