I know the empathy borne of despair; I know the fluidity of thought, the expansive, even beautiful, mind that hypomania brings, and I know this is quicksilver and precious and often it’s poison. There has always existed a sort of psychic butcher who works the scales of transcendence, who weighs out the bloody cost of true art. – David Lovelace

This recognition of the truth we get in the artist’s work comes to us as a revelation of new truth. I want to be clear about that. I am not referring to the sort of patronizing recognition we give a writer by nodding our heads and observing, “Yes, yes, very good, very true—that’s just what I’m always saying.” I mean the recognition of a truth that tells us something about ourselves that we had not been always saying, something that puts a new knowledge of ourselves withint our grasp. It is new, startling, and perhaps shattering, and yet it comes to us with a sense of familiarity. We did not know it before, but the moment the poet how shown it to us, we know that, somehow or other, we had always really known it. – Dorothy L. Sayers

This recognition of the truth we get in the artist’s work comes to us as a revelation of new truth. I want to be clear about that. I am not referring to the sort of patronizing recognition we give a writer by nodding our heads and observing, “Yes, yes, very good, very true—that’s just what I’m always saying.” I mean the recognition of a truth that tells us something about ourselves that we had not been always saying, something that puts a new knowledge of ourselves withint our grasp. It is new, startling, and perhaps shattering, and yet it comes to us with a sense of familiarity. We did not know it before, but the moment the poet how shown it to us, we know that, somehow or other, we had always really known it. – Dorothy L. Sayers

If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud. – Émile Zola

You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search. – Rick Riordan

He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist. – Francis of Assisi

He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist. – Francis of Assisi

This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art. – Salvador Dalí

Because when you love something, you want to do it all the time, even if no one is paying you for it. At least that’s how I felt about drawing. – Meg Cabot

Art is the reason I get up in the morning, but the definition ends there. It doesn’t seem fair that I’m living for something I can’t even define. – Ani DiFranco

Music is an outburst of the soul. – Frederick Delius