I felt that, in retrospect, there was a time in the late Seventies, after I had a string of hits and successes, as a performer and a recording artist, that I wasn't saying anything.

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.

An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.

The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.

The transition state of manners and language cannot be too often insisted upon: for this affected the process at both ends, giving the artist in fictitious life an uncertain model to copy and unstable materials to work in.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

When I go in front of an audience, I'll admit I sometimes have a certain amount of fear in me, because maybe the people are not going to accept what I'm doing today. That's bad for any artist, especially if what you're doing is not in line with what's happening today.

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

The problem turned out to be that I never was that kind of an artist.

So there was a way for you to get promoted and survive as an artist without worrying about AM radio hits.

Every artist seems to me to have the job of bearing witness to the world we live in. To some extent I think of all of us as artists, because we have voices and we are each of us unique.

A work of art is one through which the consciousness of the artist is able to give its emotions to anyone who is prepared to receive them. There is no such thing as bad art.

Whether you are sixteen or over sixty, remember, understatement is the rule of a fine makeup artist.

I started crying, because there's nothing like hearing that the artist who originally did the song likes your version.