Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Quotes

I was too practical to want to be a painter.

Artistic development is a thing of the past, sadly.

I got to New York when I was eighteen. I was knocking around, trying to be an actor, writer, musician, whatever happened.

I was hoping to attend the School of Visual Arts and had a portfolio built up.

I went to UCLA and studied studio art. I thought I was going to be a gallery painter, photographer, or ceramicist. Then, when I graduated, that didn't happen immediately. I didn't suddenly get solo shows in Chelsea, and I realized that is actually kind of difficult to break into.

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.

A lot of people, even my parents, thought, "Art school, I don't know. We'll support you but the success rate for artists is really slim."

When I grow up I would like to be an artist in France.

It's easy to look down from the summit you've reached, or even the summit I've reached, and talk about the responsibilities of the artist, but most people are just trying to get their foot in the door and make a living.

To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.

I've been making arts programmes for almost 50 years, and every day, I can't believe my luck.

I don't want this to be, 'Hey, you're the guy who had that one show. What are you doing now?' I want it to be a career.

I feel really lucky that I somehow have blagged my way into loads of different experiences. I find making a film fascinating, I find making a play amazing, and working with my band and scoring things... it's all really cool. I'm just a glutton for experience, really.

The things I want to focus on are music, writing, directing, and developing stuff.

As I grew older - collapsing into my seventies, glimpsing ahead the cliffs of the eighties, colliding into eighty-five - poetry abandoned me.

Even when I’m not working, I’m still working on something because I just want to create something.

Listen up and I'll tell a story about an artist growing old. Some would try for fame and glory; others aren't so bold.

The noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men, which have sought to express the images of their minds where those of their bodies have failed.

I've come to the possible conclusion that being a comedic writer/director is like running track. You do it for a certain amount of time and then you have to stop. Or you at least have to accept that you're not going to be at the top of your game. And that's OK.

In my teens I fancied myself an artist; I hung out with the eccentric art teacher at my high school, painted still lifes and portraits and landscapes in watercolor and acrylics, took private lessons, won some blue ribbons for my earnest renderings. My lack of talent did little to dampen my enthusiasm. In college I thought I'd continue, but, like Salieri, I quickly realized that while I had the ability to appreciate art, I wasn't actually very good.

Poets never die, I thought. They just fail in the end.

If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.

When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children.

I have boxes full of stuff. Most actors do have a trunk full of stuff, paintings or scripts. It never comes to anything.

I didn't do so well in the academic world, so I think the only way I could express myself was through visual art - anything I could get my hands on, whether it was glassblowing, sculpture, painting, or photography. I always wanted to be a painter. Or a farmer.