But I really want to be an artist, so therefore I have to live a little bit like a monk.

I grew up with art from the innocent age of ten - with art, but with no sense of identity.

I don't want to sound pompous, but I really think your gender doesn't necessarily dominate your sexual activity.

I never grew up with a mother's hand - that's why I will forever be insecure, I think, in that primal way.

I didn't have parents, so I lived in people's homes... And because I grew up with no parental role models, I learned to become my own friend, eventually my own father and my own mother.

I know people look at me and try to make conclusions about me immediately, based on the obvious, let's say.

I'm not involved with the female world.

I have not lived so abundantly, full of family, full of continuity and history.

If you come from a normal family, you immediately start playing the role of a boy, a girl a man or a woman, but I'm sure you'll agree with me that those are only roles, limited roles, at that.

I really need to be alone. I can't deal with someone sleeping next to me.

But as a woman, I really started feeling vulnerable on the set, and I really felt that it was important that I should not be open for invitation or making myself look as though I was waiting for something.

An extraordinary diva would never sit by herself.

I have no prejudice against male or female.

When I was preparing for the film for tree weeks, with David Cronenberg, I had a lady friend come over.

So, I lived at the Beijing Opera, I ate there, I learned a craft. And the money we made went into the company.

The beauty of it is when you can just show up and hit the notes.

I wasn't playing a drag queen - I was playing an extraordinary performer.

I am not well educated or bright enough to be politically clued in, but I hope in the film that I'm going to shock a few people, win a lot of people over.

The point I'm trying to make is, I'm really quite neutral. I have not been conditioned.

But I really want to be an artist, so therefore I have to live a little bit like a monk.

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?

No artist work is so high, so noble, so grand, so enduring, so important for all time, as the making of character is a child.

I left Jamaica for a while, because as an artist I need to experience different things, see the world, have different energies. Living in one place is not good for me.

A young and vital child knows no limit to his own will, and it is the only reality to him. It is not that he wants at the outset to fight other wills, but that they simply do not exist for him. Like the artist, he goes forth to the work of creation, gloriously alone.

Though the artist must remain master of his craft, the surface, at times raised to the highest pitch of loveliness, should transmit to the beholder the sensation which possessed the artist.

My parents always saw me as an artist, and that greatly influenced me.

I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere.