There was never any effort made out there to improve the artist.

But the working I would always want to do.

So I felt, well, I'll make the money and, with the money, do what I want to do.

From that, I became very anxious to produce something of my own.

They had to start shaving my chin when I was 12 years old because light started to pick it up.

They kept me in short pants as long as they could, until they were shaving the hair on my legs because it was beginning to photograph.

If it's boring, then it's tiring.

I never say too much about that in public interviews, because it disappoints the public to tell them you're not that crazy about a property you did that possibly they liked.

So then you have to say to yourself: Do I want to be rich, or do I want to do good work?

Well, they just don't know anything else except that one form of their business, acting, and they don't really want to learn any other part of it, or they would. Directing and producing and putting a show together is very creative, for me.

I would also like to act, once in a while, but not get up every morning at 5:30 or six o'clock and pound into the studio and get home at 7:30 or eight o'clock at night, or act over and over and over every night on Broadway, either.

People like Spencer Tracy held up because they had the background originally, but to this day they never have changed Mr. Gable's role, or most of them.

I remember Mr. Mayer very well. He sort of liked to be the father - no, he liked to be treated like you thought he was Daddy, but he didn't treat you like Daddy at all.

They thought in terms of: whatever you had that started you at the box office, this was it.

So I'm in that half-hour business where the most money is, so that eventually I feel like the people that put on the Dupont show, like maybe my artistic effort is going to be a little different.

The studio didn't ask them to learn their trade, they just worked them, and when that personality or that gimmick or whatever they had ran dry at the box office, they were dropped and out.

There was never any effort made out there to improve the artist.

But I want to do good work, after this series.

There was only so much television you could do.

To me, the series was the end of the actor, when the series ended.

So whatever I might have started to learn at that age was all undone by the next director and next crew in the next cheap picture, because I was allowed to get away with murder.

So if I keep making mistakes on Broadway or tape or film, producing, directing or acting, I can go along and do it - so long as I'm not investing too much capital in these things.

I just knew how to do the one thing I did, and whether I did it well or not depended on who the director was.

A nice, steady job I don't need that bad. I'm not that satisfied with it.

A lot of people like to run in plays because it's a nice, steady job.

In those days, even as a boy, I watched some people that I knew were living way beyond their means.

I hope this series is good work, but it is in the half-hour medium, which is limited to a kind of mediocrity that sponsors are just dying to have right now, and the public, for some reason, is unconsciously demanding.

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.