Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

In school, I learned about artists and how they were free to express themselves. I was allergic to conformity, and the lifestyle attracted me. I wanted to express myself in a way that slammed people up against the wall.

Someone was always trying to put down my individuality and personality, making me sing Mozart arias that were nothing to do with me.

There's such a freedom about being an artist... You're not accountable - you're this renegade thing.

All art is based on non-conformity.

Try to keep the rebel artist alive in you, no matter how attractive or exhausting the temptation.

Any kind of dictatorship, I'm uneasy. I just don't like dictators. I don't like crowds. I don't like hordes, and I don't like other people telling me what to do. This is probably a reaction against people telling me what to do when I was a kid. I won't join any group, espouse a cause against some other people.

A citizen sticks to conventions, does whatever is social. Artists, of course, must reject all conventions. I see no differently in reconciling the best of both of these worlds.

It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.

It does not matter how badly you paint so long as you don't paint badly like other people.

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.

It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.

Carefully execute every instruction given to you by the director, producer, and studio. But that would be a life not worth living.

Most artists like to think of themselves as rugged individualists, as independent characters.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

Influence is a very unpleasant subject and I deal with it in a maybe irresponsible way, which is to really ignore it. It would be a nightmare if we started to really think about it; it would tie our hands, it would tie everyone else's hands.

Anyway I feel myself a bit on the edge on the art world, but I don't mind, I'm just pursuing my work in a very excited way. And there isn't really a mainstream anymore, is there?

Rules are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own.

There are those who dance to the rhythm that is played to them, those who only dance to their own rhythm, and those who don't dance at all.

I will never be a fan of any kind of political correctness: I think it's instant death to creativity.

Baseball regards us as sheep.

I am a poet; I am not a worker. I need to be free.

The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime.

The path of freedom is blocked much more by those who wish to obey than by those who wish to command.

I've never been able to accept any kind of discipline.

I like art. It's another way to rebel.