Singers come and go, but if you're a good actor, you can last a long time

I'm very happy to hear that my work inspires writers and painters. It's the most beautiful compliment, the greatest reward. Art should always be an exchange.

Nature scarcely ever gives us the very best; for that we must have recourse to art.

Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.

We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.

The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.

Art not only imitates nature, but also completes its deficiencies.

Being a celebrity has taught me to hide, but being an actor has opened my soul.

And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinking.

The music industry can make you feel like a prostitute.

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

Artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.

Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.

Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.

Music should be something that makes you gotta move, inside or outside

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Each song is a child I nourish and give my love to. But even if you have never written a song, your life is a song. How can it not be?

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

Comedy is the blues for people who can?t sing.