Jasper Johns Quotes

My life is in the art that I make, and I'm very happy with it.

Art is limited to the infinite, and beginning there cannot progress.

You've got to be happy, you have to do this thing [music] for the love. It's not like you go into music because it's going to make a lot of money. It's something you do... that's the thing. You got to accept all that hard work with it, too. And enjoy it, and love it.

The best pictures are always those one dreams of when one is smoking a pipe in bed, but which never get done. But still one ought to try, however incompetent one may feel before the unspeakable perfection and radiant splendour of nature.

I don't know any musician, successful or otherwise, that got in it to make money. Or writer, for that matter. You get into it because you love it.

It is not the act of making art that is painful. It is the desire to make something and not acting on it that causes pain....A day when I don't write is less happy. This is not discipline. It is affection, enthusiasm, adventure-any number of other words besides discipline.

The joy is in creating, not maintaining.

People should practice an art in order to make their souls grow and not to make money or become famous. Paint a picture. Write.

For a creative person there's just as much pleasure in writing an eight-line poem as there is in writing a blockbuster play ... of the old '50s type.

Write for pleasure and publish for money.

I've always cared more about taking pictures than about the art market.

I always wanted to be in the world of entertainment. I just love the idea of an audience being happy with what I am doing. Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That's how I see it.

When you pick a career like acting, it's challenging, but it's a lesson every time you put yourself out there. I wouldn't change it for the world - I love what I learn every single day.

Armed with a paint-box, one cannot be bored, one cannot be left at a loose end, one cannot 'have several days on one's hands.

Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them.

I have no desire to prove anything by my work. I have never used it as an outlet or as a means of expressing myself. I just dance.

I write not for your farthing, but to try. How I your farthing writers, may outvie.

I've always been doing stuff, being creative. But I got to the point where I starting to feel this longing, craving, itchy feeling - which was the first sign that it was time. I've made a few attempts to make other solo records, but when I've looked back at the body of work I've always felt like I was never quite there.

Photography my passion, the search for truth, my obsession.

I think what we should concentrate on is what it feels like to be a working artist in the day to day. One doesn't imagine what comes down the line.

Such a divine profession is art! When everything else looks so stale and disgustingly vacuous, so enthralls even the littlest real effort of art our innermost and carries us from town, from country, from earth, as that it must be truely a blessing of the Gods.

If I wasn't an actor, I think I'd have gone mad. You have to have extra voltage, some extra temperament to reach certain heights.

I love creating. I am addicted to the drug of creation and creating things. I get a little depressed when I am struggling to find what I know is locked inside. If it's a lyric or something that is challenging me, I can be very depressed, but when it's like heaven opens up and it gives you a song, it's amazing. There's nothing else that I enjoy more probably.

I paint all the time. Each night I wrestle, I paint my face because I am an artist. It's kind of all coming together where I am able to do everything I really love to do and need in my life.