Anurag Kashyap Quotes

I guess I created LeRoy Neiman. Nobody else told me how to do it. Well, I'm a believer in the theory that the artist is as important as his work.

I don't have to ask anyone's permission to do anything. It's nice not have to get decisions out of three, sometimes four people, which can be like pulling teeth. So the amount of control that I have over what I'm doing is better for me as a solo artist.

I want to do what I want when I want to do it not be dictated to by audiences.

I can't do anything I want to. I mean, I can't have my own TV show. I can't have my own movie. But within my little world, nobody tells me what to put on the albums.

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.

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.

Sometimes I don't want to be in the confines of what a band seems to provide.

I want to be able to go wherever I want to go, do whatever I want to do. I guard the material and the filmmaker.

If I only acted, I feel like I wouldn't have enough creative expression over my own sensibility, and also if I only acted, the notion of surrendering my fate and future to other people is deeply unsettling to me and it would make me uncomfortable.

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a rock star, not an actor. It means I can do what I want on my own terms.

I don't control anything I create.

People came at me with all sorts of offers, wanting to make me into a hard-core Cher. I had no desire for any amount of money to be reformed for someone's vision, because in the end, that's what you got: your clay in someone else's hands.

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

As actors, we're like these vagabond artists: we have to be invited to perform, so if you don't have a choice of options, it's very hard to define yourself.

Yeah, I like to be the maker of the art. And I like and want the money. But I don't really dig being famous.

For your own self-respect and sanity, your creative freedom, you have to be careful that you don't rely too much on other people's opinions of what you do because it can stunt and inhibit you.

I think as an artist or a writer it's OK to want to control your own work.

I think the moment you start trying to please a fan base is when you start going downhill. I'm going to always, always write about what I want, even if it doesn't necessarily cater to most of them.

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

I care so much about making things that are useful for people to have and listen to, but I don't care so much that I won't do whatever the hell I want. It's just one of those things.

You're not a slave to those test audiences.

I try not to think too much about what the audience is thinking and what they think I should do.

I am an artist, and I have the ability and the free will to choose the way the world will envision me.

I want to make serious work that engages with serious subjects. I'm very lucky: I get to more or less make what I want.

Success gave me confidence as an artist. And now I'm able to do what I want without anybody thinking it's dumb.