Tracey Emin Quotes

Whining writers are a hideous sight; we should really shut up, because we are lucky if we can cobble together a living from all of this.

My father wasn't too crazy about me. I loved him anyway. One of the things I regretted for a long time was that he died before he could see that he would be proud of me. I was actually more what he wished for than he thought.

From time to time, I've experimented with sculpture or metal design. It's a good break from just sitting behind the keyboard.

My England captaincy was not the England captaincy I wanted, that's what will live with me for a long time.

Some of the greatest films and television have only been seen by the people that make them. And some of the greatest music is only heard by the people who make it.

There was a lot of me trying to be a 'fixer.' I was that kind of guy. I'd meet someone who had 'so much potential' that needed 'help.' I think that was kind of my curse for a long time.

It all has to do with art - writing, painting, things I've done for a long time but just never had enough time to pursue. I have poetry - things that are designed for songs, but they're always poems first.

When you're in your 20s, your 30s, even, you have - at least, I had - vast ambitions, and you sit around mooning about these things, and you're depressed, because you haven't done them. And it takes you a long time to come to the realization that if you can't be John Updike, well, then, you can't.

There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.

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 thought I had swell ideas, and wonderful musicians, but the hell of it, no one else did.

When a book goes well, it abandons me. I am the most abandoned writer in the world.

There was a long time where I was an 'artist' in quotes, who had no money. But I guess back then I also never had a girlfriend.

I kept thinking I was always going to meet the right man, but I never did. Kept waiting for this knight in shining armour. 'When's he coming? He's taking a long time, isn't he?'

I have always thought of myself as a painter derailed by circumstance.

After college, I was living in New York and wrote furiously, a huge novel that I knew was a failure. I hoped that the book would work, but to be honest, I think I knew it would never work, even as I was finishing it.

Not being published would be great. When I say that to other writers they look at me as if I'm totally insane.

I have made a number of movies that I have never seen. It's not a matter of ego. It's a matter of being disappointed. It's really a shame. It's just as difficult to make a movie that no one cares about as to make a hit.

As I'm always fond of telling hosts at the Oscars who are doing it for their first time, for everybody who wins, there are four people who don't. As the evening wears on, the room fills up with losers, and then they are bitter.

I was bartending for a long time and going on auditions and was constantly being rebuffed.

I've been making music for a long time, but I've been waiting to do it right, because I don't want people to think it's just a stepping stone in my career. A lot of actors go that route as a way of building their careers. I don't want it to be seen as that.

It took a long time for me to accept I was an actor, a professional actor, and that, actually, I make a living out of this.

Geniuses sometimes end up very unhappy, without a penny.

I've been around the music business for a long time now, and I've had a lot of chances to do movies. But I didn't really want to do any until I found stuff that started to hit me in the right place.

It's still incredibly hard. Not just honing my craft but kicking down doors, getting my work published. Early on, I could have wallpapered my house with all the rejection letters sent my way. I put thousands of hours and pages into four novels that never saw the light of day.