Gary Shteyngart Quotes

All people are struggling to be creative in some way, and the artist is the one who has succeeded in this task of life.

All you can do as an artist is do what you think is an extension of you. You put down on paper ... who you are. That's what being an artist is all about. And when it gets done, you don't look back at it and say, Oh, I could have done that better.

I truly find such a sense of peace and calm when I'm working, and it's an inner peace that I've never been ever to achieve, doing anything else. It's where I feel most myself. I can access my power and strength, as an artist, and I can't imagine not doing it. I love it!

I love making art... It's largely how I see myself. I'm an artist; therefore I have to make art.

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.

Somebody said us artists have trouble with success because art is derived from struggle. I disagree with that, because truely doing your art is success, whether you make money from it or not.

I started to realise that it wasn't for me. Perhaps I didn't have to give my Hamlet before I died, that the world might be an OK place without my Hamlet, in fact.

As an artist, you want to do roles that challenge you and say something.

I still haven't made a film that defines who I am.

But Basquiat is the first thing I've done that I'm really proud of.

I don't think the goal is, 'How big a star did you ever become?' I think the goal is, 'Were you able to express yourself?'

I feel like if I don't get a film and somebody else does, then that film never belonged to me. The ones I get belong to me.

As Devin, the person, I'm very different from my artistic self.

My personal life, my musical life, my life as an artist - almost everything has pointed all these little arrows that make up which way I go as a person and what I feel comfortable as my identity.

As I showed the world my art, my heart, I wasn't just an actress. I was actually an artist. And that was my transformation.

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.

To desire to be an artist is to desire to be a complete man in respect to some one function, to realize yourself utterly. A man is a poor thing who is content not to be an artist.

If life is a blank canvas and all people are artists, the big challenge we all face may be expressed this way: Will we ultimately produce something approaching a masterpiece, an acceptable but not particularly memorable work of art, or a creation that wouldn't even be purchased at a yard sale?

Being published is not a necessary validation or a path everyone wants to take with their work. Writing—and finishing—a novel is a great thing in itself, whether or not the book is published, or becomes widely-read or not.

I used to tell everyone I met to be an artist..... I don't do that any more.

Your greatest creation is your creative life. It's all in your hands. Rejection can't take it away; reviews can't take it away. The life you create for yourself as an artist, may be the only thing that's really yours. Create a life you can center yourself in calmly as you wait for your work to grow.

I think it was important for me to introduce myself as an artist for the first time because I'm very proud of my past, it's all a part of my story, but this is who I am now. This was a really important thing to have an hour special that lets them in and kind of meet me for the first time, truthfully.

If I have anything to give you through camera, it must be of myself. … A gnawing burns inside … to make something of myself worth giving.

Writing is its own reward.

I want there to be a piece of me in my music, you know? I genuinely believe that's the secret of all the success that's happened (for me).