Maya Angelou Quotes

I'm not an industry artist - I'm an artist in the industry.

Putting out commercial pieces and promoting them and trying to sell them to people is not necessarily what it means to be an artist.

That's important for artists to remember: some people would like to be spokespeople, but others would like their art to speak.

It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote Leaves of Grass, only that he did not burn it afterwards.

I've never believed in cheapening music by going according to what some people think is public taste.

I mean my point as an artist is I'm on my own little weird journey across the sky here and whether or not anybody's listening, or listening to the degree I would like them to, at the end of the day has to be an inconsequential thing because I can't chase this culture.

Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a 'poet.' After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.

I have never, ever sought validation from the arbiters of British poetic taste.

I'm very hard on the art world just being a big business.

I'm not an artist who has an agenda that's set by the work.

People think it's suspect and self-indulgent to make art, and I don't think that's true. Some people think you should be busy making something that you can sell in the marketplace, and if nobody wants to buy it, it must be crap. And that's not true.

I coined this term 'freedom thru limitation' back in the '90s because I was sick of art being treated like pop, because of this boring 'anything can be art' theory.

I just wanted to be an artist. I didn't care how or what; I just wanted to express my artistic integrity, and I wanted the world to have a vision of what I was seeing in my mind.

I think there is a debate in the arts about, you know, whether we must strive for art for art's sake, and you know, kind of try to keep political debate out of our work. And to that I say, I'd like you to show me an example of, you know, this so-called apolitical art. I don't think there's any such thing.

It's not in the interest of the artist to think of his market.

To be a good artist, you have to serve the work of art and allow it to be what it is supposed to be.

Art is something to be proud of. Art is no compromise.

I believe art has to take responsibility but it should not give up being art.

Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.

I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity, and that includes all kinds of parts.

The one thing I'm proud of as a filmmaker is that people are entitled not to like my films - that's the privilege of the public - but I think I have my own imprint.

Nothing wrong with making money or doing what you need to do to sell, but I think it shows when you're writing something to pay the bills and when you're writing something because it's really your version of the world.

Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.

I don't make a division between an art film and commercial art.

I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.