All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.

The art world can be very intimidating because it's just so vast. You talk to people who are really clued in to all the young artists and coming into it you're never going to be able to catch up immediately even though there's pressure to.

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.

I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.

I'm very much into the costuming of any character that I portray and it's one of the great things about making movies is it's a collaborative art form so you get all these artists who are looking specifically about for this instance your character's costume and what that might tell about your character.

Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.

A nation devoid of art and artists cannot have a full existence.

The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.

I love art dealers. In some ways they're my favorite people in the art world. Really. I love that they put their money where their taste is create their own aesthetic universes support artists employ people and do all of this while letting us see art for free. Many are visionaries.

I often find myself privately stewing about much British art thinking that except for their tremendous gardens that the English are not primarily visual artists and are in nearly unsurpassable ways literary.