Whoever wants to know something about me - as an artist which alone is significant - they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognise what I am and what I want.

I wrote and produced millions and millions of selling records so my publishing company alone was worth millions of dollars. I didn't have to work anymore in life because when the rappers started sampling... I'm the most sampled artist in history.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men necessarily must avoid the state of being alone.

The best of artists has no conception that the marble alone does not contain within itself.

The best artist has that thought alone Which is contained within the marble shell The sculptor's hand can only break the spell To free the figures slumbering in the stone.

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him everybody sees them.

An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No what the artist needs is loneliness.

Well Jeff Buckley for me is one of the greatest singers I've ever heard. And the reason why is he has an amazing range amazing emotional power in his voice. And the music he put around it also just had this passion and this soul to it and this spirit to it that very few artists have and he passed at a very young age.

With the song 'This Christmas' I wanted to do something that was kind of different. I mean Donny Hathaway is an amazing artist. So I wanted to bring my flavor to the song so when people over the age of 45 or 50 hear it they'll be like 'OK he did his thing with that record.' It's like I can appeal to everybody and not just a younger demographic.

I would like to see more airplay for all artists no matter what age. I think there's a lot of money being spent toward the young guys but a lot of the older guys are the ones who blazed the trail for those young guys.

We live in an age where the artist is forgotten. He is a researcher. I see myself that way.

New needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements... the modern painter cannot express this age the airplane the atom bomb the radio in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture.

Elizabeth Peyton the artist known for tiny dazzling portraits of radiant youth is now painting tiny dazzling portraits of radiant middle age.

Children also have artistic ability and there is wisdom in there having it! The more helpless they are the more instructive are the examples they furnish us and they must be preserved free of corruption from an early age.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.