I think artistes are humans as well. Even though they possess special gifts. They're also humans that go through what you go through every day. They have aches and they fall ill. We hear them because they're famous. A lot of unknown people, regular people who all we don't know, we don't celebrate them, they are. I think this life is an illusion. This life we need light.

An artist is a socially unattractive person whom socially attractive people make money out of.

I regard myself as an entertainer much more than an artist.

An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have.

Being an artist is this kind of occupation in which you have to make people care about your obsession.

An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them.

To be an artist is to recognize the particular. To appreciate the peculiar. To allow a sense of play in your relationship to accepted standards. To ask the question “Why?” To be an artist is to risk admitting that much of what is money, property, and prestige strikes you as just a little silly.

It became like a symbolic thing, to be "an artist." After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product.

Being an artist is more of a mindset, a way of seeing things; it is no longer so much about producing something.

The artist is the only one who detaches himself from life, opposes his personality against it, he is the only one who orders things as he wishes them to be in place of things as they are. Thus for him life is not a fait accompli, it is something to remake, to do again. He takes possession of his gifts in order to continue, to change, He makes his choice, it is he who creates the conceptions of beautiful and ugly, those are the things to preserve, the things to change. At the seat of the things that it is necessary to change he puts his desires, his aspirations, in one word, his personality...

An artist is an artist before they have ever produced a single thing. The production of something is not what makes a body an artist. It is the soul that makes an artist, the core of the psyche that fills the person, the creative fire inside a person that make them an artist. And if that person has the soul of an artist, that is they have the burning as each and every individual does, then they are an artist, they are entitled to the title artist, we are all entitled to the title artist before we have produced one single thing

Living life as an artist is a practice. You can engage in the practice or not. It makes no sense to say you're not good at it. It's like saying, "I'm not good at being a monk." You either live as a monk or not. We tend to think of the artist's work as the output. The artist's real work is a way of being in the world.

An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn’t
know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder
why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or
steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

Living life as an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice or you’re not. It makes no sense to say you’re not good at it. It’s like saying, “I’m not good at being a monk.” You are either living as a monk or you’re not. We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output. The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world.