David Bailey Quotes

I gave myself over to music and art a long time ago, so I don't get to relax and I don't get to sit still. The best I can do is constantly create my own environment so it benefits what I need to accomplish in the next step.

Every good picture leaves the painter eager to start again, unsatisfied, inspired by the rich mine in which he is working, hoping for more energy, more vitality, more time - condemned to painting for life.

Most artists work all the time, they do actually, especially good artists, they work all the time, what else is there to do? I mean you do.

I don't really take time off between records; it's a compulsion for me.

The true artist plays mad with his soul, labors at the very lip of the volcano, but remembers and clings to his purpose, which is as strong as the dream. He is not someone possessed, like Cassandra, but a passionate, easily tempted explorer who fully intends to get home again, like Odysseus.

An artist might be attracted to hedonism, but of course an artist is not a hedonist. He's a worker, always.

Experimenters don’t come in late—they never went home.

When the writing is going well, I'm obsessive. I don't shower, I don't take phone calls, I hardly respond to text messages, I don't do email. I take breaks only to read, and usually I read poetry. When it's not going well, I just lie in bed and eat chocolate.

Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting should begin by cutting out his own tongue

I have never heard a dancer asking for advice about how to stay focused on her footwork, or a painter complaining about the dull day-to-day task of painting. What task worth doing isn't worth daily effort? Do you think Michelangelo was having fun the whole time he was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling?

When they [visitors to his studio:] learn about the six-week daily-strip deadline and the 12-week Sunday-page deadline, a visitor almost never fails to remark: "Gee, you could work real hard, couldn't you, and get several months ahead and then take the time off?" Being, as I said, a slow learner, it took me until last year to realize what an odd statement that really is. You don't work all of your life to do something so you don't have to do it.

Any true musician, true artist, knows that when they're in that point of total artistic creation, whether on stage or in the studio or writing or whatever, that's the closest moment [to creation]. And that's what keeps all these people addicted to getting back to that moment again.

I'd be hanging out in my bathrobe all day, stinky, just writing, and my mom allowed me to do this-as long as I was writing songs. She said, 'As long as you're seriously working on music, I'll support you. Don't get a job, because if you work, it will crush you.

I am not retiring. Writers don't retire. Writers never stop writing.

There’s always stuff to work on. You’re never there.

I put everything I can into a record. That's what art is for. I take a risk every time I do one with my whole being.

Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.

Never give up on something that you can't go a day without thinking about.

I'm not lacking for enthusiasm as you can see, given that I have something like 65 canvases covered with paint and I'll be needing more since the place is quite out of the ordinary; so I'm going to order some more canvases.

Any artist will tell you he's really only interested in the stuff he's doing now. He will, always. It's true, and it should be like that.

If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one ... he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.

Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.

An artist is completely amoral in that he will rob, beg, borrow, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

The real artist while he paints does not think of the sale, only of the need to make a beautiful living thing.

If you study a great work of art, you'll probably find the artist was a kind of genius. And geniuses are different to you and me. So let's have no talk of temperamental, self-absorbed and petulant babies. Being a good artist is the toughest job you could pick, and you have to be a little nuts to take it on. I love them all.