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I think that artists, at a certain point, can either become defiant and say that the audience is wrong, readers don't get them, and they're going to keep doing it their own way, or they can listen to the criticism - and not necessarily blindly follow the audience's requests and advice.

Artists teach critics what to think. Critics repeat what the artists teach them.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

As long as artists arbitrarily assume the right to decide what is or is not art, it is logical that the public will just as arbitrarily feel that they have the right to reject it.

Art is always in the eyes of the beholder. Only posterity has the right to point out our mistakes.

As an artist you have to have a certain amount of arrogance.

Any artist always has misgivings about calling himself an artist.

I don't consider myself an artist. I consider myself a very opinionated man who uses words as fighting tools.

The concept that an artist would be revered by popular culture is an immediate dismissal of his relevance as an artist.