artist's struggle Quotes

Artists die twice. First creatively. Then physically. The second one is the easiest.

I had so many songs that were actually sort of finished. And I deleted them. I wrote on my website that I'd put them on the shelf, but that wasn't true. I actually deleted them from my computer. I got sort of trigger-happy and I think I deleted about 200 songs from my computer.

It's a shock for me to go through and see all those years of painting my life, which is very personal for me. It's a very difficult thing for an artist to look back at his work.

Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility. You do not know how paralyzing it is, that staring of a blank canvas which says to the painter: you don't know anything.

To express himself well, the artist should be hidden. The trouble is that if an artist knows he has genius, he's done for. The only salvation is to work like a labourer, and not have delusions of grandeur.

There were moments of despondency when Shakespeare thought himself no poet, and Raphael no painter; when the greatest wits have doubted the excellence of their happiest efforts.

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.

One of the first production deals I signed, the guy wanted my name to be Minaj and I fought him tooth and nail. But he convinced me. I've always hated it.

For an artist to do creative work, he needs at once physical health and some physiomental ill health. He needs both serenity and gloom.

I remembered my New Orleans days, living on two five-cent candy bars a day for weeks at a time in order to have leisure to write. But starvation, unfortunately, didn't improve art. It only hindered it. A man's soul was rooted in his stomach. A man could write much better after eating a porterhouse steak and drinking a pint of whiskey than he could ever write after eating a nickel candy bar. The myth of the starving artist was a hoax.

The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination.

Now there is fame! Of all - hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public - fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation of God by the artist. It is sad. It is true.

I'm lucky to have family around me. Otherwise, I'll be taking the risk of falling in love with myself. But there are always people close to me who I trust, who will scold me and pull my ears if I need it. Fame isolates people from reality. That happens to many artists, and I don't want it to happen to me.

The truth is, anyone who puts so much of herself and her life into art as you do must naturally fear any failure in that art as a potential threat to your life. And so you protect your art more than you protect your health or the common forms of happiness the rest of us have. And you probably have this in common with every artist you admire.

Every writer has to make an emotional journey from artist sitting in attic to being part of a business. The writer of a film is like Tinkerbell. You are only there because people believe in you. The moment they dont, because youre a pain the arse, youve lost.

All you can do as an artist is just strive to make the best record you can and ride the rollercoaster as it goes up and down.

One of the things when you're drawing a comic book is that you're spending four or five times as long to draw it as the writer takes to write it. In my career I've had to spend a week drawing something that a writer has thrown out in an hour. And there's nothing worse than having to work on something that no previous thought has gone into.

I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing.

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy.

I'm no expert in what country artists go through or how country audiences would react, but I'll say that the work I did to put myself in Will Lexington's shoes absolutely led me to believe that it would ruin his career. Meanwhile, I was getting lots of supportive messages saying, "Will Lexington should just come out! It's 2015 already, audiences are going to embrace it!"

I'm still afflicted with the malady of research. I don't like what I do, and I paint it out, and paint it out again. I hope this mania will come to an end... I'm like a child at school. The white page must always be evenly written and slap! bang! and there's a blot! I'm still blotting and I'm forty years old.

Most artists, ashamed of their need for encouragement, try to carry their work to term like a secret pregnancy.

Believing in one’s own art becomes harder and harder when the public response grows fonder.

I feel like it's not about the music anymore-it's about how many friends you have on Facebook and your Instagram pictures. I hate that. It's such bad publicity for music and for true artists, and I'll try to fight as hard as I can to not be like that.

Everyone always comes to one point in their life as an artist where you can either let your heart guide you or your ego.