Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.

You can't try and make something you think someone else will like. You can only make what you like. How can you make a song that Yo-Landi Visser likes? You don't know me. You'll never understand me.

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

I'm certainly not who people think I am. I always do whatever I want to do, and my films are personal to me.

The minute you succumb to outside pressure, you cease to be creative.

There were times in my career when I would try to write songs like Bob Dylan... Artists get hooked up in that. To be a follower, you lose.

Books are not brands. Some people are very willing to see themselves as a brand, but you can't be a certain type of writer to a certain type of person all the time. It will kill you.

I learned early in my writing career that if I try to tailor a song for someone else, I'm usually off base. They're usually looking for something from you with your character.

If you're trying to please everyone, then you're not going to make anything that is honestly yours, I don't think, in the long run.

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

Do what is right... do it with honesty and vigor. Be creative - that's important. Don't follow what other people are doing.

All the power to them but I'm not interested in making yet another show that looks like some other show.

Don't try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough.

To maintain one's individuality, integrity, and true personality in the theatre is a big task.

Being yourself is what will make you survive through anything. If you make music to please someone, it's the first step in the wrong direction. Always do what you believe in, no matter what people say. Only way to go!

An artist should remain true. Otherwise his talent, like his stomach, grows fat and stuffy.

Somebody once told me I shouldn't try to change Hollywood. That isn't my point at all. I don't want Hollywood to change me.

I just always make honest music. I just always kinda do what I wanna do.

Being in somebody else's thing and saying their words and not having any right to change it - I don't know how I'd deal with that. I'd like to think I could do it, but I just know I've got a dead particular taste.

My biggest thing is that I never want to sell out. Or be a sellout.

You can filter certain stuff - it depends what artist you are - but you're never going to be true to yourself if you're worried about what other people think.

When directors tell me they want a song like one, I tell them no song should be like another. I don't listen to directors.

I'm someone who speaks my mind, so it was important to me that my publisher value originality and creative expression.

As for my relationship to Beethoven, I admire people who can say what they really think. It's as though he's saying, 'That's how I feel about the world, and I don't care what people may say.' His music is pure and honest. Beethoven never pretends to be anybody else.

I must never change my way - because of critics who may not like it - I preserve my language and my style.