Edgar Degas Quotes

Art without accomplishment becomes a form of faith, sustained more by the intensity of its common practice than by the pleasure it gives to its adherents in private.

Art is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man.

Art is vice. One does not wed it, one rapes it.

To an artist, creating an image means being in love with it.

The artist is the lover of nature; therefore he is her slave and her master.

Art is jealous, and demands our whole strength ... .

That's the difference between the serious artist and the craftsman--the craftsman can take material and because of his abilities do a professional job of it. The serious artist, like Proust, is like an object caught by a wave and swept to shore. He's obsessed by his material; it's like a venom working in his blood and the art is the antidote.

To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.

We have our brush and colors - paint Paradise and in we go.

The perfect man? A poet on a motorcycle.

There are some people who want me and my husband to stay where it is safe and draw a paycheck every week instead of what we are doing (which is creating and sharing our art with others). The truth is that there are people in this world - Dave and I being two - who would die a slow painful death if stuck in an office and made to do the kind of work that we are not made to do.

I understand wanting to do your craft. I understand wanting to have a passion for your art and for your ability to be an actor, to be a singer, to be a dancer - that I understand. Wanting to be famous - I don't get that. But that's where we're living right now.

Talent must be a fanatical mistress. She's beautiful; when you're with her, people watch you, they notice. But she bangs on your door at odd hours, and she disappears for long stretches, and she has no patience for the rest of your existence; your wife, your children, your friends. She is the most thrilling evening of your week, but some day she will leave you for good. One night, after she's been gone for years, you will see her on the arm of a younger man, and she will pretend not to recognize you.

I was always an artist. I was a broker to earn a living, but I was always thinking about my art.

I will die for the art & what I believe in. The art ain't always gon' be polite.

The excellence of every Art is its intensity.

Obsession is beautiful. It's what makes art.

From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.

The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.

That's where the most beautiful art is always created, when you have someone not worried about what the outcome is.

The greatest respect an artist can pay to music is to give it life.

An artist who dedicates his life to art, burdens his art with his life, and his life with his art.

You cannot create a piece of art merely for money. Doing it as part of commerce so denudes art of wonder that it ceases to be art.

You're an enemy of art and I pity your ignorance," Domingo said.

The artist needs no religion beyond his work.