Artistic Alienation Quotes

I didn't like being a name attached to a book.

America hates the artist. It will not admit: the artist is my soul and I want to kill off my soul.

Neither Imperial Russia, nor the Russia of the Soviets needs me. They don't understand me. I am a stranger to them. I'm certain Rembrandt loves me.

Any artist who respects himself ought to be, and in every sense of the term, an emigre.

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

A poet is never one of the people. He is detached, remote, and the life of small-time dances and talk about football would not be for him. He might take part but could not belong.

To produce pure proletarian art the artist must be at one with the worker; this is impossible, not for political reasons, but because the artist never is at one with any public.

Once I've written something it does tend to run away from me. I don't seem to have any part of it - it's no longer my piece of writing.

Every time I bring an album it's like I'm bringing in the plague, once again. I don't actually know what category it all falls into, but I've stopped worrying about it.

What portion in the world can the artist have, Who has awakened from the common dream, But dissipation and despair?

We, the artists, make the stuff they sell and they're like ticks on our backs, sucking the life out of us.

Almost every truly creative being alienated & expatriated in his own country

Alexander Trocchi was an existentialist. He was looking at an alienated artist in the post-war period. It's modern because it applies now as well.

The internationalization of art becomes a factor contributing to the estrangement of art from the artist. The sum of works of all times and places stands against him as an entity with objectives and values of its own. In turn, since becoming aware of the organized body of artworks as the obstacle to his own aesthetic self-affirmation, the artist is pushed toward anti-intellectualism and willful dismissal of the art of the past.