I have been no more than a medium, as it were.
Henri Matisse

I like to pretend that my art has nothing to do with me.
Roy Lichtenstein

I paint with shapes.
Alexander Calder

I think an artist's responsibility is more complex than people realize.
Jodie Foster

I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.
Andy Warhol

I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.
Barbra Streisand

If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.
Honore de Balzac

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.
Anais Nin

If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
Vincent Van Gogh

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.
Lionel Trilling

In art as in love, instinct is enough.
Anatole France

In art the best is good enough.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.
Henry Moore

It is only after years of preparation that the young artist should touch color - not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression.
Henri Matisse

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
Oscar Wilde

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
Igor Stravinsky

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.
Oscar Wilde

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson