A Quote by Don McLean

Herman Melville was supposed to be an accountant. Van Gogh was meant to be an art dealer. I was meant to take the train into New York and work for a bank. To be an artist, you have to say goodbye to your family.

Don McLean

Quote Topics

Accountant Art Artist Bank Dealer Family Goodbye Meant Meant To Be Melville New New York Our Family Say Supposed Supposed To Be Take Train Van Van Gogh Work York Your

Quote Author

Don McLean
American - Musician
Born: October 2, 1945

Vincent van Gogh's mother painted all of his best things. The famous mailed decapitated ear was a figment of the public relations firm engaged by Van Gogh's dealer.

Roy Blount, Jr.

Did you find any artists complaining who don't already complain all day long about everything? No. But have you ever met a dealer who thought it was okay? Well, you maybe. It's still the art world. It's meant to be extreme. It's supposed to stand for liberty or whatever but really it's an extremely conservative environment. Why does everyone wear jeans? Because it's practical. To say something is taboo-breaking is to assume you have a clear image of the quality of a dealer. But there are certain dealers who always work this way.

Urs Fischer

I remember when my father passed away, we drove the funeral procession past the bank so he could say one last goodbye. That's how much the bank meant to my father.

Alexi Giannoulias

I had a Vincent van Gogh, a small Provençal landscape. We sold it. If you're going to have a van Gogh it should be a really good van Gogh.

Pierre Berge

To me, James Harden is like basketball's Picasso - he's an artist whose work you respect, even if you don't always understand its significance until later. (Or maybe Van Gogh or some other artist - I'm not an art history buff, but you get my point).

Trevor Ariza

They say that art comes from the soul. The more drama in an artist's life, the more he can draw on for his art. Van Gogh and Picasso had troubled souls, but poor Steve Kaufman has been shot once, stabbed 3 times - all by women. That is a lot of drama for great art.

Robin Leach

When I take a black-and-white portrait, it's not particularly meant to please you. It's meant to talk to you; it's meant to shame you. It's meant to scream out at you, and it has a message.

Don McCullin

I cling to the idea that Herman Melville had to work at the end of his career watching ships in a dock, as a shipping agent in New York. Any writer who thinks they should be given patronage because of their gift... you don't have to look too far in history to see that's just not the case.

Jess Walter

It sounds kind of flighty, filmmaker-y, but I believe films are a piece of art. They are meant to be what they're meant to be, and sometimes the artist is informed by the film of what it needs to be.

Ava DuVernay

Herman Melville said that artists have to take a dive and either you hit your head on a rock and you split your skull and you die … or that blow to the head is so inspiring that you come back and do the best work that you ever did. BUT you have to take the dive and you do not know what the results will be.

Maurice Sendak

I want and need the artist to take me to new places, and the new place that Van Gogh took me not the sky as it is but the sky as he felt it. And the more of us that feel the universe, the better off we will be in this world.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

You're supported by everything in New York if you want to be a performing artist. You come here, you can change your name. You leave home, you come here, you're severed from family obligations - the old identity drops away as soon as you come to New York because you're coming to New York, if you're an artist, to be someone else.

Margo Jefferson

It may be a point of great pride to have a Van Gogh on the living room wall, but the prospects of having Van Gogh himself in the living room would put a great many devoted art lovers to rout.