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.

The truth is, we haven't really figured out yet how artists are going to thrive in modern mass societies. We're all experiments.

I've never understood why artists, who so often condescend to the cliches of their own culture, are so eager to embrace the cliches of cultures they know nothing about.

Postmodernists believe that truth is myth, and myth, truth. This equation has its roots in pop psychology. The same people also believe that emotions are a form of reality. There used to be another name for this state of mind. It used to be called psychosis.

In Modernism, reality used to validate media. In Postmodernism, the media validate reality. If you don't believe this, just think how many times you've described some real event as being 'just like a movie.'

The only people left in America who seem not to be artists are illustrators.

Many people have observed that truth is stranger than fiction. This has led some intellectuals to conclude that it's stranger than non-fiction as well.

Futurism: This was a movement of intellectuals who wanted to replace tradition with the modern world of machinery, speed, violence, and public relations. It proves that we should be careful what intellectuals wish for, because we might get it.

Art imitates life. Life imitates high school.

Political art expresses the cliches you agree with, unlike propaganda, which expresses the cliches you don't.

Style is the most valuable asset of the modern artist. That's probably why so many styles are reported lost or stolen each year.

Cubism is still the most important art movement for the same reason that John D. is still the most important Rockefeller.

Many of the contradictions in Postmodern art come from the fact that we're trying to be artists in a democratic society. This is because in a democracy, the ideal is compromise. In art, it isn't.

Surrealism: An archaic term. Formerly an art movement. No longer distinguishable from everyday life.

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.

If they were starting their careers today, Rockwell and Picasso would probably both be painting on black velvet.

In America, the only truly popular art form is the movies. Most people consider painting a hobby and literature, schoolwork.

All the other kids in ninth grade were drawing hot rods and cocker spaniels and getting blue ribbons in art class. I was getting rejection slips from the 'Saturday Evening Post.'

Commercial art is traditionally delivered to a client in a brown-paper bag with an invoice stapled to the outside.

I didn't want to go to college - I was bored by junior high. So I was in church one day, staring at the stained glass windows and thinking about things, when suddenly I decided that if I could start selling cartoons to magazines, they'd let me quit high school.

I don't get ideas, I have them. The trick is to remember where I've put them.

In aristocratic societies, rich people used to commission exquisite paintings for their walls.

Many people decorate their homes with designer graffiti, even though most of them would probably have real graffiti scoured off the walls of their buildings.

New Wave art was the rage of the eighties. Now it's exhibited in oldies-but-goodies museums, usually in black-and-pink frames.

Your biggest influences are the earliest ones. When I was young, I was very influenced by the short stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Futurism This was a movement of intellectuals who wanted to replace tradition with the modern world of machinery speed violence and public relations. It proves that we should be careful what intellectuals wish for because we might get it.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

The artist need not know very much; best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks.

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

I'm inspired by nature. Other artist's work is important for developing my perception.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.

What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen.

You have to find what makes you stable in the storm. Then, no matter what's happening round you, no matter what the hype or the publicity, you can still manage to make leaps in your work as an artist.

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.

I've always felt that if one was going to take seriously this vocation as an artist, you have to get beyond that decorative facade.

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

The most colorful section of a bookstore is the display of SF books, with art by people like Wayne Barlow, who is a terrific artist.

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

Let not a man do what his sense of right bids him not to do, nor desire what it forbids him to desire. This is sufficient. The skillful artist will not alter his measures for the sake of a stupid workman.

I so much appreciate it when anybody tries to make something and tries to be an artist - I'm happy to see the work.

The artist is seen like a producer of commodities, like a factory that turns our refrigerators.

I've also been willing to share any help that I could give to any other artist.

An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature.

What is it they want from the man that they didn't get from the work? What do they expect? What is there left when he's done with his work, what's any artist but the dregs of his work, the human shambles that follows it around?