Artistic Ego Quotes

Barton Fink is just too self-important as an artist to get much sympathy.

At one moment, I thought that if I didn't do a picture in a certain way, then it wasn't a 'Mario Testino Picture.' And I've realized that Mario Testino is everything, Mario Testino is whatever he feels like being, because it always ends up looking like me, whatever I do.

I'd much rather go to a Banksy art show than a Moby art show. My art is painfully naive.

Why would we want to do an experimental album? That's just selfish.

I've always been an elite artist.

Actually, the most entitled people I've met are indie rockers and indie actors, because they really believe their press.

All these non-singing, non-dancing, wish-I-had-me-some-clothes fools who tell me my albums suck. Why should I pay any attention to them?

Sometimes if you're a director, you want to believe that you're great and capable at all aspects - the technical side, the lights, everything - but I'm not.

A key to my thinking has always been the almost fanatical belief that what I was engaged in was a literary art form. That belief was compounded out of ego and necessity, I guess, a combination of the two.

I think I could go away tomorrow. I've already accomplished something. It's such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.

Criticism? An artist wants praise. Praise.

Artists are the worst [people]. They are selfish, self-centred; they don't care what happens.

Toplines usually suck. I'll send a song to a band or artist whose entire body of work I love and I'll ask them to do a vocal for one of my songs and I'll get it back and I'll hate it so much. It might have to do with my possessiveness over my music.

Now one thing I think is really lame, is if you're an artist and you go to a karaoke bar and sing your own song. I like to get up there and sing stuff that I would never sing on stage anywhere else. Like Neil Diamond.

I never think of myself as a celebrity - or even an actor, actually. I think of myself as a writer-director.

I want all of my songs to do well whether I've written them or not.

I do have characters who are more well known than I am, which suits me fine.

It's humbling because a lot of times people think because they are the artist or the celebrity or whatever they want to call themselves that they're above being a fan. If you like something, you can like it. You don't have to be afraid to say that so I really appreciate it and you know, to me, people are people.

I think that, to be an artist, you have to have a big enough ego to believe that people out in the world want to see what you think is a good idea. And if you don't have that sense of ego, then the minute that idea goes into the world, self-doubt kicks in.

I don't expect to be another Walt Disney, but I do get a terrific bang out of being able to say things with pictures. Maybe that means something deep and profound about me - but I doubt it.

Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me.

The role of the poet is almost nothing...drearily nothing. And when he steps outside of his boots and tries to get tough as our dear Ezra [Pound] did, he will get his pink little ass slapped.

I'm not really married to the craft of jazz - I'm married to me, and my style, and whatever I produce.

To follow art for the sake of being a great man, and therefore to cast about continually for some means of achieving position or attracting admiration, is the surest way of ending in total extinction.

The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.