When an artist leaves his work to amuse people, he loses his time and their respect. If people are to be amused by artists, it must be by employing them in their legitimate occupation.
Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning.
Artists are taught to be humble about their impact, especially in folk music. It's so ingrained that I have a hard time even thinking I had any impact other than what a normal hit song would have.
The one thing I've learned in the last ten years is that successful artists don't get paid to write and sing songs, they get paid for the psychological roller coaster they're going to have to ride. That's the hard work.
The world is crawling with authors touring now. They're like performance artists.
Sometimes you have to be a diva. All the artists I admire from Madonna to Whitney to Mariah have all been called divas. If you are strong, if you have vision, if you are an artist, you have to do what you believe in. And if you get called a diva for it, then so what.
I always wanted to be an artist; being a songwriter for myself was always a must but being a songwriter for others has been a bonus.
I was listening to Jimi Hendrix; I just admire his artistry and creativity as an artist.
I feel like my peers now are artists like Madonna and the Stones, Michael Jackson and Prince. These are people who were able to take their careers beyond the normal here-today-gone-tomorrow life span.
When I put out my first mixtape, '50 Cent is the Future,' it was the first tape where an artist did the entire tape in song format.
I have a lot of tattoos. My first tattoo I had when I was a teenager was just a little heart. I am very friendly with a great artist, Scott Campbell, and I started going to him to get tattoos. I'm very spontaneous about what I get.
Marc Jacobs is full of creative people and Louis Vuitton is again a name on the door, a name that has existed for many years but I'm a collaborator there and I bring in other people, other artists and I work with a great creative design team.
I don't really count myself as a very sophisticated businessperson. I'm a creative artist. All I know from business I've picked up along the way.
But the one thing you should. not do is to suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.
I don't think that I'm a top 40 artist in any way. So I don't think I'm that mainstream.
Amazingly, I've been sort of an anomaly in the music industry. I feel like I've been able to exist as kind of a throwback artist.
There's this thing called compulsory licensing law that allows artists through the record companies to take your music at will without your permission.
How does an artist know when the line that he just painted is good or not good? That's the catch. De Kooning was the greatest of my contemporaries in art, and he knew when he'd done a good line. When he didn't, he threw it away. I wish I'd thrown away some of mine.
Hip-hop is such a disposable art form from a business standpoint. It never treats its artists as art; it never treats its product as art.
I'm a big fan of certain new acts. I love any genre of music, and I think it's really great to see that there are new artists coming through. It's kinda funny to think that I'm like the old man on campus now. But I'm really happy for groups like One Direction. I think they're really good guys.
I'm not an artist that makes singles, I'm an artist that makes albums, and it's a totally different thing.
With the new ways of getting music out, you don't need a label if you're a legacy artist.
I have inherited two of the most important brands in hip-hop, Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella. Reid and Universal Music Group have given me the opportunity to manage the companies I have contributed to my whole career. I feel this is a giant step for me and the entire artist community.
It seems likely that many of the young who don't wait for others to call them artists, but simply announce that they are, don't have the patience to make art.
I'm sure I would have been considered a more significant artist if I was a singer-songwriter. It's just not the way I roll. I love being a curator and a musicologist. People write me letters and thank me for turning them on to Fred McDowell and Sippie Wallace, and that's partly my job this time around.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: