American Artist Quotes

Forgive me not! Hate me and I shall know Some of love's fire still burns in your breast! Forgiveness finds its home in hearts at rest, On dead volcanoes only lies the snow.

Lilla Cabot Perry

The worship leader God is after is the one whose heart is captured by Him.

I absolutely hate technology, and I'm computer illiterate, and I never use any labor-saving devices although I'm not convinced that a computer is a labor-saving device.

Is it not the artist who - like our dreams - dissolves the pretenses that hide us from ourselves, disclosing both our self-serving fantasies and our unsuspected potentialities?

The Plover and the Clover can be told apart with ease, By paying close attention to the habit of the Bees, For Entomologists aver, the Bee can be in Clover, While Etymologists concur, there is no B in Plover.

Robert William Wood

To marry and have children is the ideal life for a woman. What career could ever be as fine? To give the world splendid men and women-isn't that the noblest thing a woman could possibly do?

Jessie Willcox Smith

It was great fun, to learn anew. You think you know enough, but you don't. You must open up; let it in. be receptive, admit what you don't know, which few are willing to do. Start from square one. Again!

Just because you're an adult doesn't mean you're grown up. Growing up means being patient, holding your temper, cutting out the self-pity, and quitting with the righteous indignation.'

'Why do so many people seem to love righteous indignation?'

'Because if you can prove you're a victim, all rules are off. You can lash out at people. You don't have to be accountable for anything.

Brandon Stanton

I value the referential quality of art, the fact that a work can allude to things or states of being without in any way representing them.

Labor has been one of the most important aspects of our development.... It isn't grand, but it is important and it is a thing that we should be proud of, because we have that part of our life that has gone into the building of America. Not only of ourselves, but in the building of American life.

On why he became a vegetarian:

We were selling books, and right next to us was an old man. [...] he was a holistic nutritionist, and he was talking to us about how you shouldn't really eat animals and things of that nature … and he pulled up his shirt and the man had the abs of a 15-year-old. He says to us [...] How old do you think I am? And we thought he was about 50 years old, and he's like, I'm 86 years old. … We looked at each other, me and my friends, and we were, like, when we're 86, we want to be like that …. So that's what started it.

Jeru the Damaja

Reporters listen, photographers look. If you are doing your job seriously as a photojournalist, your sight must be the primary sense that you use at all times.

Clio may be the most austere and chaste of the Muses, but she has been known to come down informally from Mount Helicon in a mood so raffish that there are those who claim to have seen her with her slip showing.

Thornton Willis

She's my friend, the boy said simply. That's who she is and that's enough for me. As Minli looked at the buffalo boy, aglow with happiness against his poor surroundings, she saw it was enough for him. More than enough, as the smile that kept curling up on his face told her.

His mother saw that he was not lonesome, and because she was an understanding mother, even though she was a cow, she let him just sit there and be happy.

Writers have written eloquently of the joys of walking, but the magic of walking is something more than pleasure. It is a true magic, a psychophysical alchemy, which transforms the body and the mind.

A lot of good and regular art gets made because of who you talk to. No one is immune to human contact and art is not made in a vacuum.

Expatriate? It appears to me that in order to be an expatriate one has to be, in some manner, driven from one's fatherland, from one's native land.... One must belong before one may then not belong.

Beauford Delaney

I wanted to change history and preserve humanity. But in the process I changed myself and preserved my own.

You can write a letter with a typewriter, a pencil, or a crayon. What you have to say is the important thing.

A rain-tight roof, frugal living, a box of colors, and God's sunlight through clear windows keep the soul attuned and the body vigorous for one's daily work.

Albert Pinkham Ryder

Jazz is my religion and it alone I do dig the jazz clubs are my houses of worship

How to paint the landscape: First you make your bow to the landscape. Then you wait, and if the landscape bows to you, then, and only then, can you paint the landscape.

It's a mistake to ask a work of art to be all things to all people.

I often wondered why I was attracted to certain landscapes and not others and why my photographs (and depictions by other artists) looked the way they did, Archetypes imprinted on my mind started me on a search...