Artist quotes

“Please, tell me you're not one of Toulouse's so talented, charmingly bohemian, tragically impoverished writers.”

Nicole Kidman - Satine

“You're an artist, man. Your job is to break through barriers. Not accept blame and bow and say thank you, I'm a loser, I'll go away now.”
Kirsten Dunst - Claire Colburn

This document will be my ticket to immortality. It'll inspire people to say of me: "There was an artist who died before his time".

Leslie Howard - Alan Squier

“- Ned Schneebly: Why don't you sell one of your guitars or something?
- Dewey Finn: What? Would you tell Picasso to sell his guitars?”
Mike White - Ned Schneebly
Jack Black - Dewey Finn

“My father was a writer. You would've liked him. He used to say that artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth up.”
Natalie Portman - Evey

“- Henry Miller: I'm not a portrait painter.
- June Miller: I'll say you're not. Look what you've done to Anaïs. You make everything ugly! Beauty is a joke for you. You're so negative. You're a failure as a writer. You're not a man, you're a child! You use women! You used me, you fucker!”
Fred Ward - Henry Miller
Uma Thurman - June Miller

“A philosopher as well as an artist. It is we who suffer most.”

Christopher Plummer - Bill

The very word "geisha" means artist and to be a geisha is to be judged as a moving work of art.
Michelle Yeoh - Mameha

“You see, I've always wanted to be a painter, and like many artists before me,
the female form has always been a great source of fascination.”
Sean Biggerstaff - Ben Willis

“We're not like other people, we're artists, you know with great talent comes responsibility.”
John Malkovich - Clown

“- Herman Mankiewicz: It won't be easy having made your masterpiece at 26.
- Orson Welles: Is that what you think - that I'm just going to burn out at the ripe old age of 26?
- Herman Mankiewicz: All stars burn out, Orson. It's the flame that counts.”
John Malkovich - Herman Mankiewicz
Liev Schreiber - Orson Welles

“I'm not one of you anemic creatures who can get nourishment from a lettuce leaf - I'm a musician, I'm an artist! I have zest and appetite - and I like food!”
Mary Astor - Sandra Kovak

“- Miss Matilda Crawley: Tell me there's something disreputable in your past.
- Becky Sharp: My father was an artist.
- Miss Matilda Crawley: A starving one I hope.
- Becky Sharp: Absolutely ravenous.”
Dame Eileen Atkins - Miss Matilda Crawley
Reese Witherspoon - Becky Sharp

- Montgomery: "A pie in the face comes with the job". That's what my mom says; she should know.
- Doris: I don't get it.
- Montgomery: A real artist must never be afraid of what other people are gonna say about him.
Paul McCrane - Montgomery
Maureen Teefy - Doris

“Love blinded me. That was the trouble between us as producer and artist.”

John Barrymore - Oscar Jaffe

“You think you're a dancer, huh. You'll never be an artist until you find out what life's about.”

Franchot Tone - Tod Newton

“You think God sits around writing songs? I am The Walrus. God's just the middleman.”
Peter Stormare - Dixie

“The artist has a special temperament, and he must live his life exclusively with those who understand it.”
Frank Puglia - Villeneuve

“How many pictures did he sell, one? He couldn't give them away. He has to be the most modern artist, but everybody hated him. He was so ashamed of his life that the rest of our history will be contribution to Van Gogh's neglect. No one wants to be part of a generation that ignores another like Van Gogh.”

Michael Wincott - Rene Ricard

“Guilt is petit-bourgeois crap. An artist creates his own moral universe.”
Rob Reiner - Sheldon Flender

“- Joe: Oh, my god! Mister, are you alright?
- Walter Shit: Two days, seven hours, twenty-three minutes and four seconds. That's how long I've been lying here.
- Joe: Are you OK?
- Walter Shit: 'Course not! I'm an artist!”

Jerry O'Connell - Joe
Jim Turner - Walter Shit

“It is not for Geisha to want. It is not for a Geisha to feel. Geisha is an artist of the floating world. She dances, she sings, she entertains you. Whatever you want; the rest is shadows, the rest is secret.”
Shizuko Hoshi - Sayuri Narration

“We've been painted by Michelangelo. Shakespeare's written sonnets about us. Beethoven's played music for us. We're not supposed to feel emotion or show any feelings. Muses are just supposed to inspire.”
Olivia Newton-Jonn - Kira

“All cultures have had means and techniques of expressing their immediate aims. The thing that interests me is that today, painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. They work from a different source, they work from within. It seems to me that the artist cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio,...” (continue)(continue reading)
Ed Harris - Jackson Pollock

“- Kathy: My dad says you are an opportunity that might not come again in a little spot like this, watching an artist at work.
- Birkin: I'm not an artist. I'm merely a labourer who cleans up after artists.”

Vicki Arundale - Kathy
Colin Firth - Birkin