The solitary creator, dreaming his or her dream, unaided, seems to me to be the only artist we can trust.

The artist after all is a solitary being.

Any artist will tell you he's really only interested in the stuff he's doing now. He will, always. It's true, and it should be like that.

The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.

Each painter really loves only one painting, the one he would like to make.

The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure.

A photographer's best work is, alas, generally done for himself.

The best artist has that thought alone which is contained within the marble shell; only the sculptor's hand can break the spell to free the figures.

Art is what you do for its own sake.

At the present time the artists stands alone.. ..no ideology can be of help to him.

Solitude is the only way to create real art.

There is only one Art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth. … Thus, from the standpoint of the work and its worth it is irrelevant to which political ideas the artist as a citizen claims allegiance, which ideas he would like to serve with his work or whether he holds any such ideas at all.

What the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves, they've got their own vision, they have their own way of fracturing reality, and if it's authentic and true, you will feel it in your nerve endings.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.