Artist's Purpose Quotes

One doesn't need to know the artist's private intentions. The work tells all.

My role as an artist is not to make changes [in society] but to inspire changes.

I always wanted everyone to love me, probably because I didn't love myself enough. But now I realize that when you're an artist, you're making the music that's in your head and in your heart, and not for any other reason.

You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.

I'm not conditioned to be an entertainer. An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself. The problem with that is artists are misunderstood by all. I'm not interested in the clarinet but in music. we speak our emotions into music. An artist should write for himself and not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away. My situation is the same. Let them concentrate on my music and not on me. I like the music. I love it and live it, in fact. But for me, the business part of music just plain stinks.

The best thing for me is the amount of DMs and people hitting me up every day saying, 'Your music is providing me with answers.' That blows my mind, because that's what Alex Turner and Eminem were for me.

And, because my role in society - or any artist or poet's role - is to try to express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel, not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all. And it's like that's the job of the artist in society, not to...they're not some alienated being living on the outskirts of town. It's fine to live on the outskirts of town, but artists must reflect what we all are. … If that's taken it too much on meself, I feel that artists are that - they're reflections of society... Mirrors.

Is it my role as an artist to say something, to express, to be expressive? I think it's my role as an artist to bring to expression, it's not my role to be expressive.

I'm hungry as an artist to find opportunities to contribute to the world in a more meaningful way than just numbing people through entertainment.

I feel like nowadays it's almost become a corny thing to say that you want to be a role model or do something good for the world, but the artists I've looked up to - like Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Prince - were about something.

I shy away from the word 'creation.' In the ordinary, social meaning of the word - well, it's very nice, but fundamentally, I don't believe in the creative function of the artist. He's a man like any other.

A picture should be the expression of the will of the painter.

A solution built by an artist serves the artist more than the solution the capitalist comes up with.

Lucian Freud's career affirms that the only thing an artist can do is remain true to whatever vision, (lack of) talent, or ideas that happened to pick them in order to be made known to the world.

People had this idea about becoming rock stars packing stadiums instead of having the goal of becoming what musicians used to be in terms of how they would perform and connect people.

As an artist, I want a reaction.

Certain artists have a role to echo the echoes of the people and that's what I'll be doing on my next album.

As an artist, I often wonder what my purpose is or why I do what I do.

I think sometimes comedians and entertainers and artists, sometimes they get onstage, and it's all for what they want to do. I think you still need to do stuff for the audience. They're the ones who are making it possible.