You are up against what people will always call the ways of the world - and the ways of this country, which does not kill artists so much as it kills the rationale for art, in part by insisting that the artist must be a successful member of the middle class, if not a celebrity, to be a successful artist. And that to do otherwise is to fail art, the country and yourself. Should you decide that writing is your way to serve your country, or to defend it, you are almost always writing about the one it could become.

Living life as an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice or you’re not. It makes no sense to say you’re not good at it. It’s like saying, “I’m not good at being a monk.” You are either living as a monk or you’re not. We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output. The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world.

To live as an artist is a way of being in the world. A way of perceiving. A practice of paying attention.

To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare to fail... failure is his world and the shrink from it desertion

To be an artist is to recognize the particular. To appreciate the peculiar. To allow a sense of play in your relationship to accepted standards. To ask the question “Why?” To be an artist is to risk admitting that much of what is money, property, and prestige strikes you as just a little silly.

Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.

Conformity no longer leads to comfort. But the good news is that creativity is scarce, and more valuable than ever. So is choosing to do something unpredictable and brave: make art. Being an artist isn’t a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It’s an attitude we can all adopt. It’s a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things you’re an artist, no matter what it says on your business card.

real artists can survive the most hostile environments and yet find their true calling like homing pigeons. That’s hogwash. Many real artists bear children too early or have too many, are too poor or too far removed culturally or monetarily from artistic opportunity to become the artists they really are.

Being an artist means to be continually asking, “How can it be better?” whatever it is. It may be your art, and it may be your life.

The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.

The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all.

The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.

Being an artist isn’t a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It’s an attitude we can all adopt. It’s a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things, you’re an artist.

An artist is a bloke who can hold two fundamentally opposing views and still function: