A Quote by Roberto Bolano

We're artists too, but we do a good job hiding it, don't we? — © Roberto Bolano
We're artists too, but we do a good job hiding it, don't we?
Artists love other artists. Shadow artists are gravitating to their rightful tribe but cannot yet claim their birthright. Very often audacity, not talent, makes one person an artist and another a shadow artist-hiding in the shadows, afraid to step out and expose the dream to the light, fearful that it will disintegrate to the touch.
It's strange that so many people think it's glamorous and fun to be on a set, I guess it shows they do a good job of hiding reality!
Artists look at the environment, and the best artists correctly diagnose the problem. I'm not saying artists can't be leaders, but that's not the job of art, to lead. Bob Marley, Nina Simone, Harry Belafonte - there are artists all through history who have become leaders, but that was already in them, nothing to do with their art.
I had taken the photograph from afar (distance being the basic glitch in our relationship), using my Nikon and zoom lens while hiding behind a fake marble pillar. I was hiding because if he knew I'd been secretly photographing him for all these months he would think I was immature, neurotic and obsessive. I'm not. I'm an artist. Artists are always misunderstood.(Thwonk)
To me, the funniest American of the Twentieth Century is Richard Nixon because he had the most to hide, and he was so bad at hiding it. To me, that's what's really funny - people who think they're doing a great job of hiding stuff, and it just keeps leaking out.
Why you in a dark hole, Astrid? Did you fall? (Simi) We’re hiding Simi. (Astrid) Hiding? From what? (Simi) Thanatos. (Astrid) Pfft. Why you hiding from that loser? He wouldn’t even make good barbecue. Barely take the edge off my peckishness. Hmmm…How come there’s no food here? (Simi)
When you're in prison, there's no hiding. These women are not hiding behind towels and shower curtains. They go to the bathroom with no doors on the stalls. It would actually look weird, if these women were hiding.
Music is my life. The last job I had, I was a bricklayer's apprentice. And I was happy with that job, too, because it was something that made me feel good. To build a wall for the side of a building felt really good to me.
I would be lying, if I said that sometimes it is just a job that you show up for because you're getting paid, and that's important, too. But, if you can be in a state of mind where you enjoy your job, whether it's just a job, or it's actually cathartic for you, or it's something personal. I think it would be much easier to be content with doing a good job.
The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.
Part of the blame can be put at the artists' door, too - no question. But I see our involvement more as a consequence. When there is too much money at stake, the whole system gets corrupted. Artists can be very vulnerable to these mechanisms.
It is the job of artists to open doors and invite in prophesies, the unknown, the unfamiliar; it’s where their work comes from, although its arrival signals the beginning of the long disciplined process of making it their own. Scientists too, as J. Robert Oppenheimer once remarked, ‘live always at the ‘edge of mystery’­—the boundary of the unknown.’ But they transform the unknown into the known, haul it in like fishermen; artists get you out into that dark sea.
I don't get involved in criticizing or extolling really good artists who do their job. That's for other people.
Many say that no real avant-garde - which I'll define as a combative group of free-thinking artists - can exist anymore. The media's reach is too vast. New artists and movements get snatched up too quickly.
Artists who say that they're artists: usually people who need a job.
Artists are supposed to be the ones with imagination. A good part of our job description is to get regular people to use theirs.
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