Michael Stipe Quotes

A lot of people don't know that before the artist, I wanted to be a writer and producer. That's always been a love of mine. Its easy for me to do it on myself, but it's fun to create for someone else.

The script is what you've dreamed up - this is what it should be. The film is what you end up with.

A great artist has a unique vision...obsession. They are someone willing to fail flamboyantly.

I'm a sponge, the more I absorb, the more I am able to articulate my vision, as artists do, like Picasso. I'm an artist in that light. I went from being an artist to an artiste.

Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes.

I do not paint what I see, but what I saw.

This industry's so full of distractions: partying, drinking, sex, money. The priority for me is just to make music that people can connect with. I want to make something fresh that people may not understand

The studio work that I do allows me to connect with people around the world. You can't perform live for everyone, so having the ability to share my creative vision with others is very important to me as well.

I never thought of being a performer, never thought of being a singer, never thought of being a photographer. It's just the trajectory of my work. I go to the medium that serves the vision.

The lives great artists live and the books they write are two very different things.

The true poem is the poet's mind.

I'm a painter, that's where I started out, at four years old, that was my first love as far as expression. So, I'm not a painter in the sense of, "Please come see my paintings" but, I do understand the value of not looking over the artist's shoulder while the work is in progress.

As an actor, you're only one little piece of the puzzle; you're fulfilling someone else's vision. If you're involved earlier on, you're kind of creating your own.

["A Deal with God"] was the first single off Hounds of Love. I'd put a lot of work into putting that album together and I wanted it to have every chance.

I'm a painter, I'm an artist. I take things too far sometimes. I really need some comfort.

Every record is a portrait of the band at that time.

The more I produce, the less I am certain. On the road along which the artist walks, night falls ever more densely. Finally, he dies blind.

I hadn't really thought about the kind of music I wanted to make. I was just making raps and stuff. I thought that was the coolest thing in the world.

All you need to paint is a few tools, a little instruction, and a vision in your mind.

The whole Beatle thing was just beyond comprehension. When 'Help' came out, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it's just a fast rock 'n roll song. I didn't realize it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help.

The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.

While photography is the easiest medium in which to be competent, it is the hardest in which to develop an idiosyncratic personal vision.

Creation rather than painting, or if painting, yet such, and with such co-presence of the whole picture flash'd at once upon the eye, as the sun paints in a camera obscura. (Describing his poetic ideal, 1817)

Now I've heard there was a secret chord That David played, and it pleased the Lord But you don't really care for music, do you? It goes like this the fourth, the fifth The minor fall, the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah

I start with no preconceived idea - discovery excites me to focus - then rediscovery through the lens - final form of presentation seen on ground glass, the finished print previsioned completely in every detail of texture, movement, proportion, before exposure - the shutter's release automatically and finally fixes my conception, allowing no after manipulation - the ultimate end, the print, is but a duplication of all that I saw and felt through my camera.