Mario Vargas Llosa Quotes

It's true that there are people who live the idea of being an artist, as opposed to the idea of making art.

It's a gift that we get to do the work that we do to call ourselves artists.

I do remember when I was starting acting, going from one set to the next, with not much else going on in my life. And at the end of the day, you get back to your hotel room and just feel this awful loneliness, because the cameras have stopped rolling.

I read a very romantic book when I was young, when I was in college: Rilke's 'Letters to a Young Poet.' And I've always felt that if you are in any kind of an artistic, creative endeavor, and you feel there's something else you can do for a living and be happy, I think you should do something else.

To be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland during a world war. To be an artist in Zurich, in 1917, implies a degree of self-absorption that would have glazed over the eyes of Narcissus.

I've been so lonely trying to become a photographer. If I'd known that before, I don't know if I had the courage to do it again. You get to a point where you feel that you have something that is your own. And if you don't find an audience for it, you are going to burst.

There's no retirement for an artist,its your way of living so theres no end to it.

When I'm writing a new play, there's a period where I know I shouldn't be out in public much. I imagine most people who create go through something like this. You willfully loosen some of the inner straps that hold your core together.

I went out of my way to try not to be an artist, because I thought I would end up leading a miserable, obscure life. I tried to escape it for as long as I could, until I had to admit at 25 that that was my path.

An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.

I do think you get lonelier and lonelier being an artist as you get older.

I want to die painting.

It's a great challenge and a wonderful journey how to figure out how to be an artist and to carve my way.

Why do writers, say, give up a job in economics and decide to write poetry? Or, why do they give up a job in a bank and decide to paint, like Krishan Khanna? They want to convey something.

It wasn't until I wrote 'Hideaway' that I found the song I related to as an artist.

Really it was the first time in my life that I recognised that acting is, I'm just going to say it, I am an artist, I have to do this, I have to do this.

Artists are never complete people. But if it's art that completes them, then what is taken away?

As a painter, it seemed easier to sort of disappear.

By the time I was a teenager, I knew I wanted to be an artist. I was a born draftsman and liked all forms of art, so I just knew that's what I wanted to do.

Effort and result are never simultaneous. In art, only the result counts.

Back when I was in college, people used to talk about the alienation of the artist, not ever quite fitting in any place.

If you're an artist, you're an artist; that's the only way I can explain it.

My ultimate search has been for a muse.

I am isolated as an artist, not as a person.

Why do we make records? Because we want to say something. Why are you in art? Because you want to say something. The second you don't have anything to say, you stop making art - you might start making product. And I'm interested in being an artist.