Garth Brooks Quotes

I didn't come to Hollywood to be subservient to anyone else's vision.

I love to work. It's the idea of having someone else tell you how to make your film or how to sell it - that's the part I can't really deal with. I would rather do 1,000 things that are work than deal with one thing that's a political problem.

My goal was, and still is, to write first, direct my own stuff whenever possible and control my own creative destiny.

I've been wanting to produce for some time because I want to have more creative control over the things that I do and not be victim to the whims of other people's desires.

Acting is a job of permission. Someone has to give you permission to do it. But I have started to be like, 'I only want to do things that I want to do,' and writing has afforded me the luxury.

After I got back my career and my artistic freedom in 1982, my golden rule is the music must never suffer.

I'm not here to put my music out on the Internet with no support and then say I got creative freedom. I've got creative freedom wherever I go: I don't create anything that I don't want to create. That's freedom. Since when does a company force you to make something that you don't want to make? If they do that, you leave.

I always say I want creative control. A lot of people don't think about that. And that's what every artist should think of - being creative and not just a puppet.

I can only control what I can, which is what I'm able to do as an artist.

I'm 100 percent in control of my artistry, music, and finances.

Young people have realised that an artist is in charge of what they're doing - this crazy cynicism that artists were puppets has disappeared.

I invest because I'm really a firm believer in letting the artist make their work, if you choose to work with an artist then you give them the go-ahead.

I think especially in a world where you have so little say about what goes on in your life, or in the politics of the world around you, it is wonderful to go into that studio, and tell yourself what to do.

My job is to just express something that I want to express. And if I'm ahead or behind the curve, that's for others to decide.

I've never let producers tell me what to do. Even when I was making television, I always did what I wanted to do, and if I couldn't, I didn't do it. It was a freedom that, these days, young directors starting out don't have.

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

I have never been assigned a game, I have never made a game I didn't want to make. I've never done anything just to make somebody some money.

I have a freedom that's incredibly valuable. Obviously my freedom is far smaller in scale than people like Zemeckis and Spielberg have here. But it's comparable. I can dream up a project, develop it, make it, control it, release it.

Artists who take on curatorial activities have the advantage of negating the professional hurdles and limitations comprising institutions.

I'm not saying I want a film career because I think I'm too good for television. I'm simply saying I want more control over my life.

I have a master plan as an artist. I've always said I'm not going to be punching nobody's clock. I will work as an artist to survive in this world.

Doing my own album provided me the opportunity to say whatever I wanted.

Right before I got 'Sons of Anarchy,' I actually quit acting for 18 months and didn't read a single script, and I wrote a film. I felt like I needed to do something that I had control over, as an artist, and also just do something where I felt like I had some control over my life, as just a human, out in the world.

I've always felt like I've had the ability to choose which roles I was going to play. I don't think that the industry agreed with me, but I've always had a bit of a headstrong attitude of only doing the things that I really believe in and want to explore.

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.