Artist's Perspective Quotes

When I'm on set, I don't really think about what an audience is going to think about a scene. I'm just thinking about how I can make it best. And how I can enjoy myself most.

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.

Every album I've made is about what I'm experiencing at the time.

I'm thankful for my songs being at the top of the charts but I am human - I think people still have to remember that.

When a painting is finished, it's like a new born child, and the artist himself must have time for understanding. How then do you expect an amateur to understand that which the artist dos not yet comprehend.

Every person I've met has influenced my songs.

I don't think I'm a political songwriter as much as I am just a political person. I think it's in my fabric.

Me being an artist working with dancers and seeing how hard they work, they are the first to show up and the last to leave. They work just as hard, if not harder, than me - and they never get credit for it.

I'm not oriented by money, to be honest. Everybody thinks we're in the music business for money all of the time. But that's not true for me.

It's easier for me to sit with the producers and the writers and I give them my feelings and my thoughts and what I think I feel like singing about and then they go away and write it.

I am an artist, art has no color and no sex.

When I'm writing a song for another artist, I purposefully make it not for me; otherwise, I get too attached.

Artists can no more speak about their work, than plants can speak about horticulture.

The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.

Sometimes I forget that I'm supposed to keep people entertained because I'm just making music for my lifestyle and for my people who live my lifestyle. We forget that there's a world waiting on us.

People should listen to my music if they just want to know me better.

I've been asked to do a retrospective since I was about 28 and I always thought that was a bit odd. It's great to look forward as an artist because in the future the possibilities are infinite; you look back and it's all fixed so it's a scary thing.

To be honest, I'm selfish as an artist. I'm doing what I want to do and what I want to hear.

I am a commercial artist because I paint to earn a living. We who earn money from what we produce are all commercial artists.

I think that the problem is that people fear so many things and they don't live life to its fullest. And for me as an artist, if God should want me to come this Wednesday to the end of my life, so be it.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

First of all, I should preface this by the observation that artists are not the best judges of what they've done and the word definitive does not belong, in my opinion, in any conversation about art. When somebody says it's the "definitive" something, I'm always recoiling.

Most people think I paint fast. I paint very slowly.

Blues purists never cared for me. I don't worry about it. I think if it this way: When I made 'Three O' Clock Blues,' they were not there. The people out there made the tune. And blues purists just wrote about it. The people is who I'm trying to satisfy.

When I did 'Wichita Lineman,' it was as good as I could do it, so I keep doing it that way. It's such a haunting song.