David Del Tredici Quotes

You only get one album. You only get one single. You get one shot in music. But I have a million different dreams. Why can't I go out and try to achieve them all? Who are you to say I can't?

I'm an older woman who's not going to have a shiny pop song ever again, so that gives me license to do whatever the hell I want.

You need the past as a guideline. The history of music is a good basis, but to escape that stuff, that tortuous rulebook, you have to learn it first. It's kind of like religion - once you've written the Bible, that's it, move on.

When I was on Disney, in the back of my head, I wanted to do - not even for anyone else, just for me - I wanted to do something that was independent. And maybe a little darker.

The very expectation that an actor loves to experiment becomes a shackle that is difficult to snap out of.

I also take pleasure in the so-called negative power in Grotjahn's work. That is, I love his paintings for what they are not. Unlike much art of the past decade, Grotjahn isn't simply working from a prescribed checklist of academically acceptable, curator-approved 'isms' and twists.

Every actor wants to break out of the box that they put you in and that's where I'm heading, out of the box as fast as I can.

I want to direct what I feel is interesting - not what is supposed to be my zone.

The great thing is that young talent isn't tied to a how-to model for starting a line; we get to find new ways to go about doing things. And don't let people tell you you can't. Go find a way to show that you can.

I'm growing as an artist and expanding my range, and not pigeonholing myself by doing the same thing, over and over.

I'm never going to be in something as commercially successful as 'Harry Potter' ever again. It's impossible. So that gives me incredible freedom to go off and make the slightly off-the-wall films that I want to make.

The goal with 'Alpha' was to run towards the cliches and then to break through them, and that doesn't change depending on the medium.

I always admired Stanley Kubrick for the fact that he managed to beat the system somehow. I think he kind of had it all figured out.

I like the idea of, not shocking people, but just throwing people off. Doing something that makes people go, 'Whoa, whoa, she did that next? Wow, didn't think she was gonna do something like that next.'

Sometimes they try to put you inside a box, but I look at my filmography and I've been able to do a lot.

We always thought we had to follow a certain theme but I don't agree with that anymore. I think the fans deserve a wider variety of music.

When you have a film that's acclaimed, there's a tendency to go big or get serious or something, but I had an impulse to do the opposite.

It's a great place to be as an artist: if you confuse your label, you're doing your job.

You're always in a box, and you're an escape artist if you do what I do - or if you're a creative person, period. You build your box, and then you escape from it. You build another one, and you escape from it. That's ongoing.

I noticed that there were all these kinds of practices in a working set that had to be un-practiced on 'Far from Heaven,' which was so interesting.

Sometimes freedom from normal rules is what gives you competitive advantage.

Yes, you want to do studio movies, but I also want to grow as an actor, and an actress like me is not going to get roles where you grow and evolve in a studio film. It's just not gonna happen.

I think for writers, I think it's really important to court eviction from your tribe: to expose things and to wake people up. And so I think that that can feel like a violation to the people you love the most.

I was termed 'choosy' because when an actor decides to go against the wind and takes on only non-formula films, he is not left with much choice.

For me, prog rock has always been essentially British. It combines all our great and eccentric genius. We are not hung up on categories, rules and classification. We love people who break the mould, challenge us and make us think differently.