Tortured Artist Quotes

You, have this whole tall, dark stranger thing going on. Not to mention the tortured artist bit.
And you, have that whole blonde cool and collected perfect smart thing going on.
You're the boy all the girls want to rebel with.
You, are the unattainable girl in homeroom who never gives a guy the time of day. ~ Sarah Dessen

You have pretty eyes, Flynn. You look like a tortured artist, she said. Uhmm, thank you? I said. ~ Bobby Hall

With their aggression, intensity, self-absorption, and endless self-promotion, our competitors don't realize how they jeopardize their own efforts (to say nothing of their sanity). We will challenge the myth of the self-assured genius for whom doubt and introspection is foreign, as well as challenge the myth of pained, tortured artist who must sacrifice his health for his work. Where they are both divorced from reality and divorced from other people, we will be deeply connected, aware, and learning from all of it. ~ Ryan Holiday

I know that I stopped thinking about extreme grief as the sole vehicle for great art when the grief started to take people with it. And I get it. The tortured artist is the artist that gets remembered for all time, particularly if they if they either perish or overcome. But the truth is that so many of us are stuck in the middle. So many of us begin tortured and end tortured, with only brief bursts of light in between, and I'd rather have average art and survival than miracles that come at the cost of someone's life. ~ Hanif Abdurraqib

Nothing that's ever happened has taken away the optimist in me. It's always, "Whatever-let's go to Disneyland." Yes, I have my bleak, tortured-artist moments, but you have to hold on to what's positive. ~ Mariah Carey

Pain and passion synchronized
comprising unborn, old and wise
Songs of the soul
oh, in torment they are born ~ Frances Livings

I always found the concept of a tortured artist distasteful. ~ Jeff Tweedy

I used to be on the kitchen floor, crying, wasted and thinking of lyrics. That was the only way I could create - as a tortured artist. I've learned that you can be stable and taking care of yourself and still create beautiful work. ~ Mary Lambert

You," I said, "have this whole tall, dark stranger thing going on. Not to mention the tortured artist bit."
"Bit?"
"You know what I mean."
He shook his head, clearly discounting this description. "And you," he said, "have that whole blonde, cool and collected, perfect smart girl thing going on."
"You're the boy all the girls want to rebel with," I said.
"You," he replied, "are the unattainable girl in the homeroom who never gives a guy the time of the day."
There was a blast of music from inside, a thump of bass beat, then quiet again.
"I'm not perfect," I said. "Not even close."
"I'm not tortured. Unless you count this conversation. ~ Sarah Dessen

I don't fall into the category of tortured artist. But it's not made me more or less anything. ~ Noel Gallagher

I think that we all have to have that rite of passage of dating the tortured artist who seems cooler than we think we are; we aspire to be like them, and we're excited that somebody is turning us on to new music or a new lifestyle. ~ Drew Barrymore

In this connection I must mention too a not altogether rational idea which I had nourished more or less vaguely for a long time: the notion that before I could achieve greatness as a writer I would have to pass through some ordeal. For this ordeal I had waited in vain. Even total war (I was never in uniform) failed to ruffle my life. I seemed doomed to quietness. ~ Iris Murdoch

I always wanted to be an artist, I just didn't know that you could be, or how you could be. I went to an art high school but they never even took me to a gallery. ~ Francesca DiMattio

I think festivals are way more easygoing than back-to-back tours are. 'Cause for me, when you get to go to a festival, you get to hang out all day, and you're really taken care of, and there's usually a little artist village where all the artists have their own tents, and it's catered, and then you go and play an hour-long set depending on where you are on the lineup. And then you go back and you hang out and you even get to go watch other artists play. So it's really just a fun interactive experience for everybody. ~ Zella Day

We may never pick up a paintbrush or sculpt a masterpiece, but each one of us - without exception - is an artist in our own way. ~ Laurie Buchanan

The beautiful is hidden from the eyes of those who are not searching for the truth, for whom it is contra-indicated. But the profound lack of spirituality of those people who see art and condemn it, the fact that they are neither willing nor ready to consider the meaning and aim of their existence in any higher sense, is often masked by the vulgarly simplistic cry, 'I don't like it!', 'It's boring!' It is not a point that one can argue; but it like the utterance of a man born blind who is being told about a rainbow. He simply remains deaf to the pain undergone by the artist in order to share with others the truth he has reached. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky

The '20s ended in an era of extravagance, sort of like the one we're in now. There was a big crash, but then the country picked itself up again, and we had some great years. Those were the days when American believed in itself. I was happy and proud to be painting it. ~ Norman Rockwell

The unconscious of an artist is her greatest treasure. It is what transmutes the dross of autobiography into the gold of myth. ~ Erica Jong

One song will launch you, but you don't want to be a one-song artist. ~ Michael Bolton

Because it wasn't enough to be accompanied by the beast who scared the crap out of every god in Heaven, Xuanzang was assigned a few more traveling companions. The gluttonous pig-man Zhu Baijie. Sha Wujing, the repentant sand demon. And the Dragon Prince of the West Sea, who took the form of a horse for Xuanzang to ride. The five adventurers, thusly gathered, set off on their -

"Holy ballsacks!" I yelped. I dropped the book like I'd been bitten.

"How far did you get?" Quentin said.

He was leaning against the end of the nearest shelf, as casually as if he'd been there the whole time, waiting for this moment.

I ignored that he'd snuck up on me again, just this once. There was a bigger issue at play.

In the book was an illustration of the group done up in bold lines and bright colors. There was Sun Wukong at the front, dressed in a beggar's cassock, holding his Ruyi Jingu Bang in one hand and the reins of the Dragon Horse in the other. A scary-looking pig-faced man and a wide-eyed demon monk followed, carrying the luggage. And perched on top of the horse was . . . me.

The artist had tried to give Xuanzang delicate, beatific features and ended up with a rather girly face. By whatever coincidence, the drawing of Sun Wukong's old master could have been a rough caricature of sixteen-year-old Eugenia Lo from Santa Firenza, California.

"That's who you think I am?" I said to Quentin.

"That's who I k ~ F.C. Yee

I'm not that kind of publicity, attention-grabber type of artist. ~ Jessica Simpson

I've found that limitations can be an artist's best friend sometimes. ~ Michael Gungor

AUNT MARY: And will you be saying that when you're forty and he's sixty? Or when you're sixty and he's eighty, and you have to change his diapers?

RYANN: He's got money. We'll pay someone else to change his diapers........It means nothing to me! Mal at eighty will be just as sexy to me as Mal at forty. His mind is incredible, and the things he makes with his hands are just beyond amazing. He's an artist. And he treats me like I'm the most important person in his life. ~ Ruby Dixon

By artist I mean of course everyone who has tried to create something which was not here before him, with no other tools and material than the uncommer-ciable ones of the human spirit. ~ William Faulkner

Find 'em hot, leave 'em wet," he murmured.
"Well known firefighter maxim. ~ Kate Meader

When you are an artist, you want your audience to think it's effortless and easy. ~ Charles Fleischer

Fuck you! Someone has tortured and killed one of your girls and you couldn't give a damn? I thought you were supposed to protect them, to be their guardian. Isn't that what pimps do?' Garcia's face flared red. ~ Chris Carter

To paint that horrible scene, something terrible must have befallen the artist. ~ Jeff VanderMeer

I know it is common nowadays for artists to start labels but this is a thoroughly constructed vehicle for inspired talent. This is a market that we've been living, breathing and eating for our entire lives - one where a huge void currently exists. Favored Nations is a long-term commitment. ~ Steve Vai

I think what really separates artists from the rest of the world is that artists feel like they have permission to keep exploring and expressing their process. Most people censor that because they don't think it's good enough. Everything is measured against this patriarchal hierarchy of value, as if one person's singing voice is more important than another's. ~ Antony Hegarty

A dreamer rises above their inherent fearfulness that they will always produce inferior work and grants oneself a license to put forth their best effort. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Artists thrive off each other, and when you see other people doing cool stuff, it inspires you to do cool stuff. ~ Courtney Barnett

The artist likes to seem totally responsible for his work. Often he begins to explain it, to make it appear as if it were a reasonable process. ~ Arthur Erickson

The artist, who must venture into the studio and risk there, and then venture into the marketplace and risk again, is obliged to learn how her defences work, so that she can drop and raise her guard instantly. ~ Eric Maisel

A good day - a bad day - so it goes on. Few people can be so tortured by writing as I am. Only Flaubert I think. Yet I see it now, as a whole. I think I can bring it off, if I only have courage and patience: take each scene quietly: compose: I think it may be a good book. And then - oh when it's finished! ~ Virginia Woolf

God and other artists are always a little obscure ... ~ Oscar Wilde

Artists are most themselves when they are out of their minds, transcending the ego skirmishes of conceptual thought, and intuitively relinquishing control to the greater Creator ~ Alex Grey

I actually went on lectures at Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and all the business schools eight years ago, explaining what the implications were and how the platforms could be powerful in creating the narrative of your brand and mobilizing your life so that you become humanized as well. I understood that and thought that was really empowering, not only to artists, but to brands as well and in general. ~ MC Hammer

To produce pure proletarian art the artist must be at one with the worker; this is impossible, not for political reasons, but because the artist never is at one with any public. ~ William Empson

It may be said that artist and censor differ in this wise: that the first is a decent mind in an indecent body and that the second is an indecent mind in a decent body. ~ George Jean Nathan

The art of living involves the act of creation. The work of art is nothing. It is only the tangible, visible evidence of a way of life, which, if it is not crazy is certainly different from the accepted way of life ... For the artist to attach himself to his work, or identify himself with it, is suicidal. ~ Henry Miller

They were in the world and not of it
not because they were saints, but in a different way: because they were artists. The integrity of an artist lifts a man above the level of the world without delivering him from it. ~ Thomas Merton

The rocket was beautiful. In conception it had been shaped by an artist to break a chain that had bound the human race ever since we first gained consciousness of earth's gravity and all it's analogs in suffering, failure and pain. It was at once a prayer sent heavenward and the answer to that prayer: Bear me away from this awful place. ~ Michael Chabon

I just want to kind of tackle every kind of form that exists in the comedy world; whether it be stand-up or hidden camera or parody. Kind of slap it in a movie with hip-hop artists and actors, comedians and girls. I just want to do something fun. ~ Pauly Shore

I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous man, the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the man in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable ~ Henry Miller

However contradictory the coroner's report - whether he pronounces Consumption or Loneliness or Suicide to be the cause of death - isn't it plain how the true artist-seer actually dies? I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human conscience. ~ J.D. Salinger

One of the things that sells music is when the artist is looked at as someone who's come up from the streets. Not just any streets, but the toughest, meanest streets of the urban ghetto. And that's called 'street credibility.' ~ Geoffrey Canada

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself. ~ Oscar Wilde

As an independent artist, you're always figuring out how you're going to fund your next album. ~ Tess Henley

My advice is, if you are going to go on 'X Factor,' you have to know who you are as an artist. ~ Rebecca Ferguson