I visit studios. Just to get the feel, the smell, and see what other people are doing. Not only listening to the radio, but going to studios, greeting musicians and artists, just getting a vibe.
There is something inherently valuable about being a misfit. It's not to say that every person who has artistic talent was a social outcast, but there is definitely a value for identifying yourself differently and being proud that you are different.
People are afraid to ask musicians to be involved in projects because they anticipate being turned down. Young artists hesitate before contacting me. People in my position don't get approached often enough.
The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure - if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out.
Words are one of the most powerful things given to human beings. In the hands of artists who can use them properly they are like weapons of mass construction.
I would advise dancers, musicians and others in the entertainment industry to take up yoga, as it clears the mind and creates a sense of balance and stillness which is important for any performing artist.
Every woman artist has to kill her own grandmother. She perches on our shoulder whispering, "Don't embarrass the family.
You know you possess the soul of an artist when, each time you sit down to create, the whole universe lays itself at your feet.
Fifty years ago, it was the dream of every bohemian artist to be seen getting out of a limousine wearing blue jeans and sneakers. Today, it's the dream of probably half the people in the country.
Gathering your own reference materials, sketches and using your own imagination is going to help you grow as an artist far more than stealing someone else's work.
If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.
I get bored doing one thing only. I've been very lucky to explore a lot of different artistic territory and I don't see why I won't continue on that path.
I know a lot of artists say this, but it's hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There's no tricks.
I'm always looking for something that's real and that's got meat on it. I think it's artistic suicide if you're too vain, or if you're afraid to play ugly. I would never fall for that.
I'm not the kind of artist who has an idea and then carries it out; it's more like I find what the idea was through doing the paintings.
Writing is the only art form where a good number of the artists make a slice of their living criticizing one another in print, in public.
Any artist who goes to Las Vegas is an idiot as far as I am concerned. Whoever goes to Las Vegas can stay in Las Vegas.
Of all the artists who emerged in the '80s, I think perhaps Cindy Sherman is the most important.
I'm an artist and an engineer, which is, increasingly, a more common kind of hybrid. But I still fall into this weird crack where people don't seem to understand me.
San Francisco has long been a leader in the arts, nurturing generations of painters, sculptors, poets, novelists, playwrights, film-makers, and performing artists and innovators of every kind.
The conscience of an artist worthy of the name is like an incurable disease which causes him endless torment but occasionally fills him with silent joy.
