Most works of art are, necessarily, bad...; one suffers through the many for the few.

Great artists suffer for the people.

Los grandes artistas sufren por las personas.

Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it.

If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one ... he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.

Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief. All kill their inspiration and sing about their grief.

Each painting contains so much suffering.

The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.

To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare to fail... failure is his world and the shrink from it desertion

Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring.

I think that at the bottom of every artist there is absence.

Art is a hideously painful business, you know. Pity me! Or at least buy me a drink.

most people are artists and dreamers in their youth, but their talent and appreciation for art are destroyed by continual application to business and the duty of getting on. (September 11)

"It is not the favourable conditions, but most deprived circumstances that mould an artist” - about the struggles that he had undergone in his life as an artist.