Artist's Mindset Quotes

A philistine is habitually bored and looks for things that won't bore him. An artist finds things boring, but is never bored.

I'd much rather be playing songs than talking to people.

The artist is inherently a romantic to some degree, and as such, I believe in a muse. But I don't try to analyze too much where it comes from.

I have this very strange relationship with my work, which is that it's like a conversation between me and it.

I'm a big people watcher and a people talker. The beautiful thing about being an artist and a creative person is that you can get an idea from anywhere, and I'm always on the hunt for them.

I always think about that when I make a song, 'what is the dance gonna be?'

I don't view myself as a musician anymore - I view myself as a human being that functions as a musician when I'm functioning as a musician, but that's not 24 hours a day. That's really opened me up to even more perspectives because now I look at music, not from the standpoint of being a musician, but from the standpoint of being a human being.

I don't even listen to the records after they come out. It's outlawed in my house. My wife and my kids can't play any of my music around me. Once it comes out, for me, it's just business. Numbers.

If an artist wants to use his mind for creative work, cutting oneself off from society is a necessary thing

I try to keep the idea that there's an audience in as little space in my mind as possible, but you can't erase it entirely, the idea that when you're sitting down to write a song, people are going to hear it.

I always considered myself being an organizer. I'm very good at teaching singers, I'm very good at staging a show, to entertain people. But I never included myself. I never applied this to me as an artist.

I have noted that, barring accidents, artists whose powers wear best and last longest are those who have trained themselves to work under adversity. Great artists treasure their time with a bitter and snarling miserliness.

I take audience reaction very seriously.

That is the most important thing to me, what happens behind the closed doors in the studio and makes me an artist.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

If you're an artist, you try to keep an ear to the ground and an ear to your heart.

Whatever happens in my life, whether I stand up or I fall down, whatever the case, I'm going to use it in my art. Why? Because I'm an artist and I have to.

She was an artist. She held opposites in her mind.

If you are any kind of an artist, then validation . . . can be a result, but you're going to do the work anyway.

As an artist, you tend to gravitate to the opposite. I know, when I finish a song or an album, I'm interested in doing something completely new. It doesn't always happen, but that's the idea. My poor fans - I don't know if they love that or hate that.

A working artist is a playing artist.

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.

'Writer's block' sounds so dramatic and worrisome, and I don't worry about it. I know deep down that I'm a writer, and it's just a matter of time until it comes back, and when it does, it'll be good like it's always been.

My songs are not angry or bitter, because I am not bitter. I'm hopeful, and as an artist I have to be, not just for my future or for the future of my children but for the whole world.

I don't do much press. I don't like to talk about my music too much before I do it.