One Lucky Soul: Some Soulful Artists Quotes

Following the earlier Some Soulful Travel Quotes and Some Soulful Writing Quotes, here are quotes about Artists. I was going to combine Artists and Arts, since there is no mere separation between both. Then I decided to leave Art quotes for a future piece. An additional one will be about Creativity. Enjoy...

“The artist’s task is to save the soul of mankind; and anything less is a dithering while Rome burns. Because of the artists, who are self-selected, for being able to journey into the Other, if the artists cannot find the way, then the way cannot be found.”
— Terence McKenna

“The Man of Genius may at the same time be, indeed is commonly, an Artist, but the two are not to be confounded. The Man of Genius, referred to mankind, is an originator, an inspired or demonic man, who produces a perfect work in obedience to laws yet unexplored. The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected. There has been no man of pure Genius; as there has been none wholly destitute of Genius.”
— Henry David Thoreau

“My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.”
― John Lennon

“What the really great artists do is they’re entirely themselves. They’re entirely themselves, they’ve got their own vision, they have their own way of fracturing reality, and if it’s authentic and true, you will feel it in your nerve endings.”
— David Foster Wallace

Ever flickering between a faint glimmer and shining brightly, the creative artist is like a twinkling star. Their time of hiding in the darkness is the fuel needed to glow across the sky when the ‘light’ time comes. For them, embodying the significance of their insignificance by being nothing and everything simultaneously is the greatest poetry there is.
— Omar Cherif

“Degenerates are not always criminals, anarchists, and pronounced lunatics; they are often authors and artists.”
— Max Nordan

“Indeed, the Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself”
— E. E. Cummings

“Being an artist means forever healing your own wounds and at the same time endlessly exposing them.”
― Annette Messager

“It is not the job of the artists to give the audience what the audience want. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artist. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need.”
— Alan Moore

“Blessed are the weird people ― poets, misfits, writers, mystics, painters & troubadours ― for they teach us to see the world through different eyes.”
― Jacob Nordby

If you have the guts to call yourself an artist, then you are one. It is as simple as that. 
— Omar Cherif

“We all have the same inner life. The difference lies in the recognition. The artist has to recognise what it is.”
— Agnes Martin

“The ideal state for the artist is total alienation.”
— Vladimir Tatlin

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Beware of artists. They mix with all classes of society and are therefore most dangerous.”
― Queen Victoria

“I think the joy of art is trying to convey what you perceive so that other people will perceive it more or less the same way. Art is a form of seduction. I mean, there are rapists in the intellectual world: they become politicians; the seducers become artists: we try to seduce people into our reality tunnel instead of leading them there with a gun.” 
— Robert Anton Wilson

“Encourage all artists; for it’s how we get a glimpse of others’ realities.”
— Omar Cherif

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”
— Pablo Picasso

“An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realise the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are.”

— James Baldwin

It is often said that if you decide to devote your life to art — as in fully, authentically, and wholeheartedly — it would be almost impossible to also share it with another human being. At least not for extended periods of time. When art is your muse it becomes your raison d’être. No earthly presence can ever replace such a fierce, liberating creative force or realm. As such, no great artist can make a great husband or wife. Simply because you cannot own the life of the true artist or poet. They are married to their arts. Hence cannot belong or be confined to a specific time or space. They remain vagabonding through life — like refugees who do not belong anywhere.

— Omar Cherif

“The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.”

— Anton Chekhov

“If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“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