Nick Lowe Quotes

It's very easy I think when you're a creative person to wait for the right thing and to start getting self-conscious about how you are going to express what you do and what's special about you. I would say in general, a lot of times the answer is that you just dive into something and you find your own voice through that process.

Our influences are who we are. It's rare that anything is an absolutely pure vision; even Daniel Johnston sounds like the Beatles. And that's the problem with the bands I'm always asked about, the ones derivative of the early Seattle sound. They don't dilute their influences enough.

I am not quite a poet but I am something of the kind.

I think all artists have a different story to tell, and no story is the same.

I am only an artist.

Being an artist doesn't just mean you have a song. That doesn't make you an artist. The word 'artist' means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists - Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West - are doing the most.

The creative process has been a little bit of an experience, really - to try and make that work for me. The only way I know how to do that is just to remain genuine, humble, and true to everything I know already in my life.

I never jump on to a song and say 'I will only sing it.' I am not too obsessed as a singer. I am happy being a composer.

I'd never take any credit for David's music - that's all his.

You're always going to get comparisons. Everybody comes out and says, 'He's the next so and so,' or, 'He reminds me of so and so.' I have so many influences and stuff in my brain, who knows what's going to pop in and come out.

I think that other people covering my work is really exciting... Im really open to that kind of thing because I think interpretation is an art form.

I think it's a big part of being a creative person.

Do you think its possible to live without wanting to put your name on your paintings? To belong to a group so securely you don't need to rise above it?

I'm going to work with Dan Clowes. After Charlie Kaufman, it's hard to fill up the gap. It's hard to find somebody who... A lot of writers, I can clearly see the desire of succeeding before the desire of expressing themselves. Sometimes people get upset when you want to be different. You were talking about "whimsical," which is a nice word. But sometimes they use the word "quirky" in the pejorative sense. I get frustrated, because they feel like I'm doing whatever I want, and there is no ground, and I don't really care. They feel it's cynical. But I don't think I have any cynicism in me.

I think perhaps I've learned to be myself. I have a theory that all artists who would be important - painters and writers - must learn to be themselves. It takes a very long time.

... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.

Well if I could play like Wynton, I wouldn't play like Wynton.

That’s why I hate to take credit for the songs I’ve written. I feel that somewhere, someplace, it’s been done and I’m just a courier bringing it into the world.

I think as an artist that's the best thing you can have - a personal stamp on something.

Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you're doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas, and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.

composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.

You've really got to get down on the floor with yourself and get low in order to make great art. I think you've just got to accept who you are and do the most unbelievable things.

I'd like to walk that fine line between the authentic artist self and the manufactured artist self. I'd like to exist outside of a set of expectations or assumptions about what the Kehinde Wiley brand is. And I'd like to walk towards something that's a bit more unpredictable, human.

I think it's vital to be honest with yourself. You do have to satisfy yourself first. If you're drawing something, you have to ask yourself if it's something you genuinely think is funny. Or is it starting to fall into just a category, just kind of a shtick thing? I think it's important for all cartoonists to be honest with themselves about their own sense of humor and what they're doing.

If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), "Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?" chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.