Lynn Nottage Quotes

Corporations have steered the industry into what it wants, and a lot of times they will make artists record what it wants or to make songs talk to who they want to talk to. But sometimes the heart and the head have to be able to talk and deal with a situation that's evident.

What you're really after when you see a film or listen to a song is a singular vision, and I'm not sure how much of that you really get in Hollywood.

One of the worst things that can happen to an artist is to perceive himself as the owner of his art, and art as his tool. A product of the marketplace sensibility, this attitude barely differs on a psychological plane from the patron's view of the artist as a paid employee.

I think a lot of times we think of music as being different from other art forms. You would never ask a sculptor or painter, 'Go paint this because you'll get paid more,' you know what I mean?

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

The saying "the business of art is different than the purpose of art" makes sense, and what are you going to do about that? You have some obligation to get the work out there, you believe in it enough that it should be out in the public, but of course it goes through a system that takes it pretty far away from the reasons you made them.

An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.

Any combining, mixing, adding, diluting, exploiting, vulgarizing, or popularizing of abstract art deprives art of its essence and depraves the artist's artistic consciousness. Art is free, but it is not a free-for-all.

I practice the artist's golden rule. I wouldn't want somebody telling me how to finish my painting, I'm not going to tell him how to finish his movie or how to shape his movie.

All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don't want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don't think art should be escapist. That's a waste of time.

Some writers' view of things depends upon the success of the final result. I'd rather stand or fall on my own concepts. But there is a fine line to be drawn between pointing up something or distorting it.

I don't think that Dreamworks would have signed me expecting to really mess around with whatever it is I do.

The dean of the American Film Institute has written that I'm one of the very few auteurs in America. I've had freedom for 40 years to create art that is totally personal and is what I believe in.

I'm not an artist who has an agenda that's set by the work.

It's not in the interest of the artist to think of his market.

I was literally told for 'The Show Goes On' that I shouldn't rap too deep. I shouldn't be too lyrical. It just needs to be something easy on the eyes. Like a record company telling Picasso that we don't need these abstract interpretations of life, where people have to sit down and look at it and break it down.

I don't want money to ever drive my career. I want my career to be driven by what I want to do in art.

I have to be able to be the artist that I am.

Putting out commercial pieces and promoting them and trying to sell them to people is not necessarily what it means to be an artist.

In the 1970s when I started in the art world, no self-respecting artist would have stood in line to try to get on a television show. It never would have happened.

When you give an artist a canvas, you shouldn't tell him exactly how much paint to put on it, or exactly how sharp the images should be. You should let the artist get going.

That dichotomy between the public consumption of the work and my intent and practice in making it is an uneasy one for me, on occasion.

We are going to finish this picture just the way I want it... because you cannot compromise an artist's vision.

When the uncreative tell the creative what to do, it stops being art.

What happens with artists, or people who start off doing things for the right reasons, is that you slowly start to paint yourself into a corner by doing what people outside of the creative world are asking you to do, and I think that's antithetical to being an artist.