Pastoral Resources

My parents cultured me a lot and they introduced me to a lot of artists, a lot of their friends.

That was a wonderful period in my life. I mean, I didn't become an artist, but somebody let me do something I loved. What a luxury, to do something you love to do.

I believe there is little to gain by exchanging opinions with other artists concerning either the ideology of art or technical methods.

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.

The physical characteristics of the child Jesus will always remain a point of discussion. No artist has ever produced a type, nor ever will, that has in it all that the varying minds of all time will acknowledge as complete.

I decided on the spot that I would be an artist, and I assure you, it was no ordinary artist I had in mind.

I discovered that it was a lonely world being a solo artist. Then I started working with another solo artist, Rod Stewart, and he used to tell me how lonely he was!

I am a poor student sitting at the feet of giants, yearning for their wisdom and begging for lessons that might one day make me a complete artist, so that if all goes well, I may one day sit beside them.

That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind.

If it is the mark of the artist to love art before everything, to renounce everything for its sake, to think all the sweet human things of life well lost if only he may attain something, do some good, great work - then I was never an artist.

Artists are never complete people. But if it's art that completes them, then what is taken away?

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

I'm inspired by nature. Other artist's work is important for developing my perception.

Well, first of all it's entertainment. That stops us becoming too pretentious or thinking we're great artists.

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.

Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.

The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.

I was exposed to the arts, but there was no one in my family who was an artist.

I hadn't been a recording artist all that long when albums came on the scene, and I was one of the first singers to point the way to how varied an album's contents could be.