Quotes / Mad Artist

Anime and Manga

Like I always say, destruction is the purest form of art.

— Kato, a.k.a. Rainbow Parakeet, Astro Boy

People are worth nothing compared to my dolls! They're all shallow, depraved, ugly creatures! Dolls are perfect creations: the come to life or capture death by my hand! Their fate is chosen by me! I AM THEIR GOD!

— Kyogetsu Ujie, Hell Girl

Art is a bang!

— Deidara, Naruto

"Flowers, lives, love... They are most pristine when they are at the brink of being destroyed. As an artist... I yearn for the sight of this academy's final moments as it teeters on the brink of destruction. This I shall impress into my memory."

— Hitomi Ishigami, Rosario + Vampire

Audio Plays

Damien Pierson: It seems your friend the Doctor isn't quite the art lover I hoped he would be.
Ace: If you've hurt him—
Damien Pierson: Don't be stupid, girl! I'm not going to hurt him... not yet. The final work would be sadly diminished if we wasted all our materials on the sketches.
Ace: Sketches?
Damien Pierson: All great works begin with sketches... but they are just pale echoes of what is still to come.
Ace: And what's that, then, Damien? What have we got to look forward to? More hallucinogenic paintings?
Damien Pierson: My sculpture! My masterpiece! The piece that will assure my place among the greatest artists in history!

— Big Finish Doctor Who: Dust Breeding

Comic Books

"Behold my architecture: bricks of viscera, with knife as trowel..."

—Sir William Gull, From Hell

"That's why some days he's a mischievous clown and others a psychopathic killer. He has no real personality. He creates himself each day. He sees himself as the lord of misrule and the world as a theater of the absurd."

— Dr. Ruth Adams on the Joker, Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth

"I know it's uncomfortable at first... feels like you're drowning. Then the plaster starts to give off a really intense heat. It may seem unbearable. I'm sorry for that. But it doesn't last. Only as long as it takes... It's okay. I know what I'm doing. I got an "A" star for art at high school."

— Nicole Ryan, Hellblazer: City Of Demons

"Poor Nero. Accused of fiddling while Rome burnt. For another people, the charge might be that he did nothing but play his harp in the hour of disaster. That is not the crime for us good Romans. The crime was that he was Emperor and playing a harp at all. Oratory. War. Law. Fit for an Emperor. Not music. Not acting. Not art. And Nero wanted to be an artist and a gladiator. Killing as economics is Roman... not killing as art. In Julius' last life, I would not have had such thoughts. Perhaps I am Nero in this life, and not Julius... At least I am no Caligula."

— Lucifer (Circa 455 AD), while playing on a harp made of corpses, The Wicked + The Divine

"With resources inherited from Lady Shaa and the help of acolytes desperate to aid me in my work, I designed a great engine. It was a weapon, of course, powerful enough to burn the city to ash. But anyone can make a weapon. To be worthy of the Force, my design had to be so much more...And it was. I would begin to destroy the city, let the heat and the ash and the flames rise up. And at the moment the people understood their imminent doom, I would pour the Force into my engine and use it to stop the flow of time. All those minds, reacting as one. Pain and fear on a scale the Galaxy had never known. Frozen like insects in sap for everyone to see...Forever. An eternal shrine to the Dark Side. My masterpiece."

— Darth Momin, Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith

Film — Live-Action

"I do what other people only dream: I make art until someone dies. See? Hehehehehehe. I am the world's first fully-functioning homicidal artist."

— The Joker, Batman (1989)

"This guy must have 500, maybe 600 bodies down there. Stuck up on the walls like some psycho version of the Sistine Chapel!"

— Darry Jenner, Jeepers Creepers

"Think beyond splattering blood on canvas. When our masterpiece is complete and the coroner's report is back in it will read 'the cause of death... art.'"

— Alexander, Murder Party

Luigi Largo: You're the street physician carving flesh sculptures!
Pavi Largo: Paint your ass like Rambrandt! Ha! You like that?

— Repo! The Genetic Opera

Literature

The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.

— The Blue Cross

It was my ambition to create a crime nobody could solve. But no artist, I realize now, can live on art alone. There is a natural craving for recognition that cannot be gainsaid. I have, let me confess it in all humility, a pitiful human wish that someone see just how clever I have been.

— U.N. Owen, And Then There Were None

Remaking's art, you know. Sick art. The imagination it takes! I've seen Remade crawling under the weight of huge spiral iron shells they retreat into at night. Snail-women. I've seen them with big squid tentacles where their arms were, standing in river mud, plunging their suckers underwater to pull out fish. And as for the ones made for the gladiatorial shows...! Not that they admit that's what they're for. Remaking's creativity gone bad. Gone rotten. Gone rancid.

— Derkhan, Perdido Street Station

Your life may be brief, but celluloid will make you live forever! I will enjoy making art out of you. And don't worry: you can always be replaced by a younger actor...

—Marvin Maximus Mogul, INTER Active Secret Agent File: Orbit Of Fear

Live-Action TV

"Marcus is an expert. (Some say 'artist,' but I've never been very comfortable with labels.) He's a bloody king of torture, he is! Humans, demons, politicians, makes no difference. They say he invented some of the classics, but he won't tell me which ones."

— Spike, Angel, "In the Dark"

"Using Gilbert and Sullivan for genocide is very creative. Me, I'm more of a jazz artist. Like Miles Davis with 12-gauge."

— Gunter, Bullet in the Face

Trin-E: I think he'd look good with a dog's head.
Zu-Zana: Or maybe no head at all! That would be so outrageous.
Trin-E: And then we could stitch your legs to the middle of your chest.
Zu-Zana: Nothing is too extreme.

— Doctor Who, "Bad Wolf"

"I've had twenty years to come up with the perfect trick. It's going to be my masterpiece; my Mona Lisa; my Breaking Bad Season Five! (They gave me cable in prison so I'd stop killing the guards.)"

— The Trickster, The Flash (2014)

Firefly: You still haven't told us how you're going to take over the underworld.
Jerome Valeska: Who says I wanna do that? I'm an artist. I just wanna paint the town crazy.

— Gotham

"I open his throat from the outside to access the trachea and expose the vocal chords. I open his throat from the inside using the neck of a cello. Powder on the wound, rosin from a bow. I wanted to play him. I wanted to create a sound. My sound."

— Will Graham, exploring the mindset of a killer, Hannibal

King: You'll never get off the ship.
Lenore: It will become a floating tomb, drifting through space with the soul of the great Karidian giving performances at every star he touches.

— Star Trek: The Original Series, "The Conscience of a King"

Dr. Crusher: [observes sketches] You should be drawing, not killing people.
Finn: I can do both.

— Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The High Ground"

"We're his canvas, his blocks of marble. With us he practices his ghastly art."

— Star Trek: Voyager, "The Thaw"

"A good death is a death of art, a bad one is the death of a butcher. You, Boris, are a butcher. I am an artist."

— Commissar Vassiloff, The Twilight Zone (1959), "The Jeopardy Room"

Stand-Up Comedy

"Hitler was a vegetarian and a painter. So he must have been, 'I can't. Get. The Fucking. Trees—Damn! I will kill everyone in the world!'"

— Suzy Eddie Izzard

Tabletop Games

In the modern nights, the Toreador antitribu have similar interests as their Camarilla siblings, only their appreciation for the aesthetic has grown to include pain, savagery, cruelty and depravity. How is a rose, sonnet or portrait any more enrapturing than a masterfully-executed flaying, reason the Toreador antitribu? What is beauty, if not subjective?

—Vampire: The Masquerade - Guide to the Sabbat

In the total darkness of his hellish fortress, the ancient Vampire paints on human skins, creating terrifying scenes of a world where there are no living, where the dead walk the land and withered, undead trees blight the bleak landscape. Melkhior claims that he paints visions of the future, glimpses of a time that is to come. Perhaps his visions are true - and the known world is doomed to the horrific existence of unlife.

—Warhammer: Vampire Counts (5th Edition)

Ramhotep's skill in undeath is as great as it was in life, and the statues that receive his attentions are restored to their former majesty, striding into battle as if they were carved only yesterday. He works relentlessly to maintain his masterpieces, and such is the likeness between these effigies and the gods they represent that the ancient pantheon blesses them and protects them in battle. With this army of walking statues, Ramhotep intends to pull down the cities of those who defiled his work, slay the inhabitants of these uncultured civilizations, and construct his greatest monument to date: a vast mausoleum built from the bones of his foes.

—Warhammer: Tomb Kings Army Book (8th edition)

Like all Haemonculi, Urien has an undying enthusiasm for crafting symphonies of pain. He carries a variety of strange weapons to war, including a gauntlet that can inject his own highly mutagenic ichor into his foes and a blade that can kill with the slightest scratch. But the true weapons of this demented fiend are the repugnant creations that shamble out from his flesh-pens; a menagerie of horrors that strains the sanity of all who behold it. Blood-splattered Wracks and towering Grotesques stalk between living sculptures that moan and stagger as rapacious Haemovores writhe in the gore beneath. At the head of this gruesome procession comes Rakath himself, theatrically conducting the carnage about him like a ringmaster at some hellish circus.

—Warhammer 40,000: Codex - Dark Eldar (5th ed)

The Masque of the Reaper's Mirth takes the Laughing God's bloody humour to an extreme. Every battlefield is a gory canvas upon which they can paint their masterpieces of death. It is not enough to simply kill their enemies: they must be made examples of in the most extravagant manner. The Palace of Crystal Bones, Hall of Echoed Screams and Fountain of Crimson Tears are all works of the Reaper's Mirth. Because of their penchant for inventive cruelty, the masque attracts a higher proportion of Death Jesters. These macabre warriors take sardonic pleasure in fighting alongside the Players of a Reaper's Mirth as they enact their performances of genocide and horrific destruction.

— Warhammer 40,000: Codex - Harlequins

Theatre

They say your ship was sinking, John
You'd started missing cues
They say it wasn't Lincoln, John
You'd merely had a slew of bad reviews

— "Ballad of Booth", Assassins

Video Games

"Hahahahaha! Did you see that?! That right there is true art! What a stunning explosion! Art is detonation!"

— Crimm, The Explosive Artiste, Luminous Avenger iX

Glitz! Glamour! So what if a few people have to die? That's show business, baby!

—Mettaton, Undertale

"When Picasso became bored of painting people, he started representing them as cubes and other abstract forms. The world called him a genius! I've spent my entire surgical career creating the same tired shapes over and over again: the upturned nose, the cleft chin, the ample bosom. Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could do with a knife what that old Spaniard did with a brush?"

— Dr. Steinman, BioShock

I want to take the ears off, but I can't.
I hop, and when I hop, I never get off the ground.
It's my curse, my eternal curse!
I want to take the ears off but I can't!
It's my curse! It's my fucking curse!
I want to take the ears off! Please! Take them off! PLEASE!

— "The Wild Bunny," by Sander Cohen, BioShock

Critical Killing
Is an art unto itself
And I am Rembrandt

— Zer0, Borderlands 2

Urist McArtist cancels task: taken by mood.
Urist McArtist looses a roaring laughter, fell and terrible!
(Urist McArtist drags Urist McVictim into the nearest butcher shop or tanner shop, brutally murders McVictim and makes a random object out of the leather or bone.)

— A possible scenario in Dwarf Fortress

Deacon: Look at the brushwork. And the bold use of color. Oh, and how batshit crazy the painter was, don't forget that.
Piper: Huh, are these abstract- oh God.
Curie: For medical research, autopsy and the study of the human body is important. But this? This is sick.
MacCready: Oh. Great. Thanks for the Nightmare Fuel.
Cait: I dunno, I kind of like these paintings. Feels good knowin' someone out there is more miserable than me.

— Companion responses to Pickman's Gallery, Fallout 4

"All architects before me only knew how to build... create... only I am bold enough to destroy! Let's start... with that little school over there!"

— Mr. Mechanical, Freedom Force

"I've sold almost a hundred million books. That number baffles even me; I'm not what you would call a populist. Murder, rape, incest, infanticide, sick twisted and cruel characters suffering similar fates; monsters - human and inhuman - haunting desolate spaces; a world controlled by misanthropes torn asunder, reduced to bodily fluids... And still people keep reading. Says a whole lot about the state of the world, doesn't it? My head isn't a good place for a visit, but you read one of my novels, that's exactly where you're going."

— Sam Krieg, The Secret World

"Most people think art is about beauty. It's not. Beauty is merely a side effect, one of the many impossible results. Art is about the process. It's about getting your hands dirty. Wield the brush as if it were a blade. CUT into the tender flesh of inspiration. PEEL away the distractions, and any notion of complacency or security. Until all that's safe and conventional is TORN OUT in BLOODY CHUNKS. Dig DEEP into the GUTS and GORE of your creative being, so you can touch the raw NERVE of your PSYCHE, and SCOOP OUT the sheer MEANING. The sheer... beauty.

You... probably think I'm mad. Well, that's alright. Madness, much like art, is in the eye of the beholder."

— The Artist, Layers of Fear

"Revulsion is instinctual... and instinct is a powerful level to work toward. To evoke it, a glorious accomplishment! Revulsion is a striking colour on my palette. I see wonderment in your dead eyes: you long to wield such power as deftly as I!"

—Andrei the Tzimisce, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

"Art requires a certain... cruelty."
"Death should never be quick. It should be an opera."
"They will dance, they will sing, they will die!"
"Each bullet is a song."
"Art should terrify."
"I do what others will not. That alone is innovation."
"This would be easier if blood came in more colours."
"My work asks questions, it never has answers."
"I have risen from the filth and muck. I am the lotus blossom. I am beauty."
"They called me mad. All artists are mad."

—Jhin from League of Legends, in his own words.

"This is the photo that took one of my eyes, but gifted me with vision. The moment of death, captured like a fly in amber. A life ends and a flower of flesh and blood is born. I realised the beauty in destruction, I was eager to share my new work with the world. Neophytes. Philistines. Fools. They feared what they could not comprehend, were determined to stop me. Some consider this new world horrific, for me it is a world of beauty, full of pure creations that is limited to my imagination. A world whose very fabric I can shape but where can I go from here? She is the key, the path to ultimate power. She is the brush, blood is my paint and this world is the canvas. My name is Stefano Valentini and art is in the eye of the beholder."

—Stefano Valentini, The Evil Within 2

"Art is suffering! I don't expect a man of your limited education to understand! Without darkness, there is no light! Don't you understand anything? She died so millions of others could experience truth through my art! To understand pain, it must be administered as well as felt."

—Peter Dreyfuss, Grand Theft Auto V

"Do you know what it means to be a killer? Think of the most profound thing you've ever done, the most beautiful thing you've ever created. And I promise you it's nothing compared to watching the life bleed out of someone, to see the fear in their eyes, to feel them pawing at you for release, to hear them pleading, begging. THAT'S true art. That's what you have to be; an artist. I've left my mark on the world, have you?"

— Manny Sherman, The Devil in Me

Webcomics

"'Torture' is such an inelegant word. I'm an artist. Their testicles are my canvas."

— Revolver Ocelot, The Last Days of FOXHOUND

Web Original

The Joker isn't a criminal. And he isn't even really a terrorist. He's more like a... terror-philosopher. And The Dark Knight is his Republic. He commits crimes like grad school students write dissertations, planned out to direct the reader — or, in his case, society — to their way of thinking. His endgame isn't to rule Gotham, it's to create more people like him. He's like a self-replicating idea-virus.

— "Cinematic Batmanology"

"UTILIZE the canvas! Expose the people to Art reality. Art is for the people & people are for Art. Mourn the loss as a cochineal or spent paint.

— One of many different manifestos from the "art terrorist" group Are We Cool Yet?, as cataloged by the SCP Foundation

"What is the fucking point of making work that kills anyone who looks at it? The whole damn point of art is to send a message! How the hell can your audience get anything from a piece when it rips their heads off and shoves it in their asses or some shit? That’s not art, it’s fucking bullshit!”

— Jack "The Critic" Dawkins, "Everyone Knows", SCP Foundation

"She also took to painting the walls again, but now she would walk down the halls naked and dripping with black paint, just dripping all over the fucking carpet, before pressing her flesh into the walls, leaving behind impressions of her body everywhere. These paintings were of seductive poses, of power poses. Poses that intimidated and marked her territory. Poses that seemed to watch you as you walked through the halls. She bent and contorted her body to leave haunting faces on the walls and other unsettling abstract imagery."

— Corin Deeth III on Belladonica, Kakos Industries

Matt Johnson sees life as a movie where he’s the star-auteur, always performing, or thinking how to best frame himself for the imaginary audience, effectively treating the universe as a Matt Johnson Joint...Parlaying that modern disease into a self-aware school shooter, borrowing Catcher in the Rye from the school library 'cos it’ll be funny,' is a genius move, especially when any would-be maniac is fully aware — often, as a motive — that infamy awaits, with 24 hour news using body-counts like a high score, and where any actual docu-footage would be ghoulishly judged on the Dutch camera angles and soundtrack choices.

—Stuart Millard on The Dirties

Real Life

Poetry implies either a happy gift of nature or a strain of madness.

— Aristotle

"Qualis artifex pereo!" ("What an artist dies in me!")

—Nero

A culture is made — or destroyed — by its articulate voices.

— Ayn Rand, The Voice of Reason

In 1971 H.H. found a second home at the White House, assigned with G. Gordon Liddy to "the Room 16 project" where the administration prepared its crimes. Room 16 marks the high point of H.H.'s career; his art and arts were now perfected. Masterfully, he forged; he burglarized; he conspired. The Shakespeare of the CIA had found, as it were, his Globe Theatre. Nothing was beyond him — including tragedy.

— Gore Vidal, "The Art and Arts of E. Howard Hunt"

The outermost limit of endeavor is creative work. Anything less is too close to simple survival until death happens along....I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form even if all books are destroyed.

—L. Ron Hubbard

"I lived in Hollywood and I had all that, the Rolls Royce and the Ferrari and the pad in Beverly Hills. I had the surf board and the Beach Boys... the Neil Diamond...the Elvis Presley's best of bestlies and all them guys. The Dean and Martins and the Nancy Sinatras and the cops and sovereigns, "Will you do it to me? I hear you do it good honey" and all that kind of "Will you come up to my house later?" So I went through all that and I seen that was a bigger prison than the one I just got out of and I really didn't care to go back in prison. See, prison doesn't begin and end at the gate. Prison is in the mind. It's locked in one world that's dead and dying, or it's open to a world that's free and alive."

—Charles Manson

"When I turned forty, I didn't want to have anything as mundane as a midlife crisis. Instead, I decided to convince my friends and family that I'd gone completely mad. So I became a magician".

—Alan Moore

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