The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.

Only among people who think no evil can Evil monstrously flourish.

We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.

Don't let young people tell you their aspirations; when they drop them they will drop you.

Hearts that are delicate and kind and tongues that are neither - these make the finest company in the world.

Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there isn't a God.

He who goes against the fashion is himself its slave.

The mere process of growing old together will make our slightest acquaintances seem like bosom friends.

I can't forgive my friends for dying; I don't find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.

The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.

Many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true!

There is one thing that matters, to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.

How it infuriates a bigot, when he is forced to drag out his dark convictions!

Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm and behave as outrageously as the world lets them.

We need two kinds of acquaintances one to complain to while to the others we boast.

How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares were there a danger of their coming true

It is the dread of something happening something unknown and dreadful that makes us do anything to keep the flicker of talk from dying out.

How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true

There are two things to aim at in life first to get what you want and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.

The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people and greatly assists the circulation of the blood.

I might give my life for my friend, but he had better not ask me to do up a parcel.

The word snob belongs to the sour-grape vocabulary.

Style is a magic wand, and turns everything to gold that it touches.

Whiskey has killed more men than bullets, but most men would rather be full of whiskey than bullets. What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.

What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.

But I found a lot of artists at the Cedar Bar were difficult for me to talk to.

Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think.

I got to sit down with people who I admired, and have conversations with some of the greatest thinkers and artists and performers. It's a huge privilege for me to be a journalist.

I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.

David Cronenberg knows what we actors do as artists.

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

Many of the artists who have represented Negro life have seen only the comic, ludicrous side of it, and have lacked sympathy with and appreciation for the warm big heart that dwells within such a rough exterior.

A great thing happening now in art is that artists are using the figure, the body, clothing, life.

The number of contemporary artists who appeal to me is infinitesimal.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

Music is art, art is life, and we are who we are, and all of these aforementioned women, unless they should choose not to, will be performing well into the next many decades because they are great artists.

Because when the film was first mooted, the Beatles didn't like the idea at all. In fact they wouldn't have any part in it. And when Brian had committed them, it was part of a deal he did with United Artists, I think.

Artists are like everybody else.

When artists make art, they shouldn't question whether it is permissible to do one thing or another.

My proudest achievement has been the success of the shows and artists I have been involved with, because they were made in Britain.

The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

I didn't want to save art - I respected the older artists too much to think art needed saving. But I knew it was finished, even though, at that time, I didn't know what I would do.

Music is more emotional than prose, more revolutionary than poetry. I'm not saying I've got the answers, just a of questions that I don't hear other artists asking.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

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.

I want to run for the Senate from Tennessee. Not now, but when I'm 50, when music dies down a little bit. I know lots of artists and actors have those delusions of grandeur, but ever since I was a kid, it's been of interest to me.

Let's look at people as artists and try to support them; just because Picasso painted a couple of bad paintings, that's no reason to say he's a lousy painter.

Idol has pretty much taken me out of my recording and out of my choreography. I have managed to slip in some choreography jobs. And I've been writing songs for other artists.

Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.