Ma Jian Quotes

I don't write just to be clever. But sometimes I do. And if you don't have an understanding of the language, then the way in which it's bent doesn't actually register. It's the old you-gotta-paint-like-them-before-you-can-paint-like-you thing.

I had really great art classes. Really great art teachers. Arts played a very important role in having a place to express yourself uniquely.

An amateur may not be an artist, though an artist should be an amateur.

Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation.

Art is not the possession of the few who are recognized writers, painters, musicians; it is the authentic expression of any and all individuality.

Sometimes I find myself at three o'clock in the morning painting something and throwing things around and seeing what works. I'd like to properly study fine art. I think it would be quite an interesting endeavor.

In reality, however, an artist is a product of art

I went to college as a theater major. But after about three weeks of that, I changed to the school of fine arts as a painter.

I think that everyone who does music, and everyone who does art, or everyone who decides at a young age that they're gonna do that, is someone who feels like an outsider. The world is not really set up for that.

I am here on Earth to express myself, and the many media of art are my magic carpets that allow me the freedom to do so.

If I only acted, I feel like I wouldn't have enough creative expression over my own sensibility, and also if I only acted, the notion of surrendering my fate and future to other people is deeply unsettling to me and it would make me uncomfortable.

In a lot of the art world, you have to present yourself as you know what you're doing at a young age. Music gave me another outlet. The 'no wave' bands were such an inspiration; it felt so free - once you start doing it, it's hard to stop. But I can't get away from art. It comes back around. I wouldn't be true to myself if I didn't pursue it.

I will preach with my brush.

It's only when an artist becomes a master that they are fully able to express themselves.

I'm not sure if I always wanted to be a writer, but I was always writing.

I knew I wanted to be an artist at age 5 or 6. I always drew. At 8, I was permitted to study.

Making art has never been a mystery to me. It's never been something that's very difficult.

You can go down the list of great artists and kind of understand that they are products of their environment. Whether it's U2 or Henry Rollins or myself or Johnny Lydon, they're gonna be products of their environment.

I was raised around a lot of artists, musicians, photographers, painters and people that were in theater. Just having the art-communal hippie experience as a child, there wasn't a clear line that was drawn. We celebrated creative experience and creative expression. We didn't try and curtail it and stunt any of that kind of growth.

All the things we have to remember, and I've mentioned this before, is that we're all artists.

My father was a professional artist all his life who encouraged my path as an artist.

As long as you're true to you, you believe it and you make others believe it, then what you're doing is just art. If you give everybody a blank canvas and some paint, not everybody's picture is going to be exactly the same, but it's still art. I just do what I do.

I just wanted to be an artist. I didn't care how or what; I just wanted to express my artistic integrity, and I wanted the world to have a vision of what I was seeing in my mind.

I've been drawing my whole life. My mom says my sister and I were drawing by age 1. Animation seems a real, natural extension of drawing as a way of telling a story visually.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.