"The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them."
— Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

"All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness."
— Eckhart Tolle

"We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.
"
— Pablo Picasso

"An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. "
— William S. Burroughs

"I don't believe in art. I believe in artists."
— Marcel Duchamp

"You don’t make art out of good intentions."
— Gustave Flaubert

"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. "
— Christian Bauman

"The public wants work which flatters its illusions."
— Gustave Flaubert

"The individual, man as a man, man as a brain, if you like, interests me more than what he makes, because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves. "
— Marcel Duchamp

"When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"I've been told my old city possesses a 'thriving arts scene,' whatever that is; personally, I think artists should lie low and stick to their work, not line-dance through the parks."
— Walter Kirn (Up in the Air)

"Are artists and writers the only people entitled to lives of their own?"
— Richard Yates (Revolutionary Road)

"Dive again and again into the river of uncertainty. Create in the dark, only then can you recognize the light."
— Jyrki Vainonen

"I spoke fire, laughed smoke, and madness spilled forth from my inspiration."
— Arthur Holitscher

"He’s a pagan! I’m an artist! We’re naturally sympathetic!"
— Sidney Howard

"Art – the one achievement of man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised"
— James Thurber

"I will always know the glory of the beautiful and rare, as they will know security from labour and prayer. As they will hear the laughter of the children they gave life, I will know the torments of the song born under knife."
— Roman Payne

"I’ve decided the act that cannot wait / is the important will to create / But, ah, if my belly is ignored / the pantry door I shall implore / But I’ve been known to reach the bed / ideas still famished in my head."
— Roman Payne (Cities & Countries)

"If you participate in life, you don’t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too much. The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature. All the misfortunes Providence inflicts on him come from his stubborness in denying that maxim."
— Gustave Flaubert

"On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters."
— Gustave Flaubert (Bouvard And Pecuchet)

"It's impossible for a creative artist to be either a Puritan or a Fascist, because both are a negation of the creative urge. The only things a creative artist can be opposed to are ugliness and injustice."
— Liam O'Flaherty

"The blood of my motherland waters a magic plant that cures all ills. That plant is art, and sometimes art needs corruption as a kind of fertilizer"
— Alfred De Musset (Lorenzaccio)

"Possible reality [is obtained] by slightly bending physical and chemical laws."
— Marcel Duchamp

"The first among mankind will always be those who make something imperishable out of a sheet of paper, a canvas, a piece of marble, or a few sounds"
— Alfred de Vigny (Stello)

"No more painters, no more writers, no more musicians, no more sculptors, no more religions, no more republicans, no more royalists, no more imperialists, no more anarchists, no more socialists, no more Bolsheviks, no more aristocrats, no more armaments, no more police, no more countries, enough of these imbecilities, no more, no more, no more, no more, no more"
— Louis Aragon (Aragon, de dada au surrealisme, papiers inedits 1917-1931)

"The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable."
— H.L. Mencken

"But who cares if the body's cold?
The mind loses its clutter,
It gives an edge to all the songs
and verses that I utter
("The Confession") (circa 1140)"
— The Archpoet

"All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."
— Pablo Picasso

"Unbelievable,” I said when it was done. And Brilliant and Audio crack and That one will be everyone’s breakup song, and so on, because great is never good enough for the artists; they always want to know exactly what you mean and which nanosecond of the song you mean it about."
— Kelley Eskridge (Dangerous Space)

"... but now men who could work preferred to beg, and the artists forgot that their calling was noble and became imitators instead of creators, charging exorbitant sums for the rubbish they churned out with one eye closed."
— Pauline Gedge (The Eagle and the Raven)

"The artist must manage to make posterity believe that he never existed."
— Gustave Flaubert