Bette Davis Quotes

Every art expression is rooted fundamentally in the personality and temperament of the artist.

When did the word 'temperament' come into fashion with us? Perhaps it came in when we discovered that artists were human beings.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

People might look at you a bit funny, but it's okay. Artists are allowed to be a bit different.

I come from an era, in my world, where you just had to define yourself as who you are and what you do. I happen to be an actor. I happen to be someone that loves to act, that also likes music, that also likes to speak, and that also has an opinion.

Don't worry if people think you're good. Make this your experience. And find out what makes you unique as an artist. You don't get the opportunity to do that as much in the real world.

For an artist, to be normal is a disaster

There's a great deal of difference between temperament and temper. Temperament is something you welcome creatively, for it is based on sensitivity, empathy, awareness ... but a bad temper takes too much out of you and doesn't really accomplish anything.

Well, you could almost say, I suppose, that the scientist seeks what is similar between any two days, or bluebirds, or glaciers. And the poet seeks what is different. The artist seeks to celebrate the unique.

Temperament is the thermometer of character.

When the individuality of the artist begins to express itself, what the artist gains in the way of liberty he loses in the way of order.

You are the artist and the art.

I thought that from the moment someone else could do the same as myself, there was no difference between the pictures and they should not be signed. Afterwards I realized it was not so and began to sign my pictures again. Picasso had begun again anyhow.

There is a variety in tempers of good men.

They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist.

I think perhaps I've learned to be myself. I have a theory that all artists who would be important - painters and writers - must learn to be themselves. It takes a very long time.

... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.

It is not what an artist does that counts...but what he is.

Try to keep the rebel artist alive in you, no matter how attractive or exhausting the temptation.

I think as an artist that's the best thing you can have - a personal stamp on something.

The same applies to any artist; we are the tools and instruments of our talent. We are outsiders; we have no place in society because society is what we’re watching, and dealing with.

How can people think that artists seek a name? A name, like a face, is something you have when you're not alone. There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world, lit or unlit as the light allows.

I'd like to walk that fine line between the authentic artist self and the manufactured artist self. I'd like to exist outside of a set of expectations or assumptions about what the Kehinde Wiley brand is. And I'd like to walk towards something that's a bit more unpredictable, human.

Sometimes people save the best part of themselves for their art.

If he [the Artist] were to take up the pen it would be...to better express his individuality and explain it to others; or else to put his internal affairs in order...to deepen and sharpen his relationship with his fellow men because other souls exert an immense and creative influence on our soul; or to try to fight for a world as he would like it to be, for a world that is indispensable to his life.