Aging Artist Quotes

I suppose I could do 'The Reassembler' at 80. But it would be a terrible cliche.

When Michelangelo was an old man, he drew himself sitting in a child's pushcart.

They all want you to make a movie for under a million dollars, which I don't want to. I don't want to be a faux radical film-maker at 70. I did that. I don't need to do it again.

I hate to paint portraits! I hope never to paint another portrait in my life. Portraiture may be all right for a man in his youth, but after forty I believe that manual dexterity deserts one, and, besides, the color-sense is less acute. Youth can better stand the exactions of a personal kind that are inseparable from portraiture. I have had enough of it.

Can you blame them? We have to filter so much information these days. But it does make it difficult for an artist. I'm 46 years old now. I've had a lot of life experience and my voice has changed. People who expect the same old me are bound to be disappointed.

Feeling I'd scarcely arrived at a style, I now find I'm near the end of it. I'm not quite sure what Late Style means except that it's some sort of licence, a permit for ageing practitioners to kick their heels up.

It always makes me sad when someone comments on how much they love my work- from 15 years ago! I don't want to be just another old school guy that fell off.

However, yes, especially as one gets older, you know, you really hope that your music will become more generally available, even though some of the performances might be riddled with faults.

I don't want to be 50 years old and rapping, man. I'm pretty sure nobody wants to do that.

Art is eternally young, but the poet ages. If only he remained as young as art! If only it aged with him!

From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short.

I can paint until I'm forty. After that I intend to dry up.

Well, now I'm an old photographer and I still don't sell.

They love putting me in the 'indie queen' box. I had some high standards in my 20s that I don't have anymore.

After 58 years you'd think writing would get easier. It doesn't. If you're lucky, you become harder to please. That's all right, it's still a pleasure.

Listen up and I'll tell a story about an artist growing old. Some would try for fame and glory; others aren't so bold.

If the average jazz artist uses his head and at the outset of his career realizes he won't play as well at fifty as he does at twenty-five, he won't be in a line-up outside the Salvation Army when he's fifty.