Kirk Hammett Quotes

I used to feel an obligation to invent things. I felt I was a failure because I didn't do massive great novels about Australia or the outback or something. I just don't feel that any more.

There was a lot of pressure to find a genre and stick to it. People would tell me all the time, 'You can't be all things to everyone.' I would say, 'I'm not trying to be! I'm being what I want to be for myself.'

It is difficult to be that band that doesn't do things the way other bands do it. It's a blessing and a curse.

I never thought of myself as being in the avant-garde. I said what I had to say, as I was able to say it.

There are obviously so many artists that are very inspiring, but I can't say that they like - that I have someone in mind that is like a creative direction of where I want to go as an artist. I think I'm just doing my own thing.

I think I've been a bit misunderstood; the first record was more timid than I wanted it to be. I don't like getting pinned down by sex or how I sound like because it's not who I am or what I want to be.

The revolt against individualism naturally calls artists severely to account, because the artist is of all men the most individual; those who were not have been long forgotten.

All movies are different, all movies have their own life.

If a man ain't nothin' else, then he's an artist. It's the only thing he can claim to be that nobody can prove he ain't.

My stuff is my stuff. I do it for my own reasons, using my own peculiar set of guidelines. I'm not a student of the genre. I don't care what anybody else does.

I don't want to direct a movie as good as Antonioni, or Kubrick, or Polanski, or whoever. I want it to be my own. I think I've got the seed of it and, what's more, that I can make movies that are different and informed by my taste.

K. Dot was a kid who was trying to find himself in music, finding trends, um, bending towards - ready to bend towards what the industry was telling me to do and after you mature at a certain time in your life, you come into your own...your own niche, your own personality, not only as an artist but as a person.

As far as being a 'player's player,' you've only got to go to Nashville or Argentina and you can forget about it. The world is full of amazing guitar players, and you know it, and I know it...it's a humbling experience.

Don't worry about trying to develop a style. Style is what you can't help doing. If you write enough, you draw enough, you'll have a style, whether you want it or not. Don't worry about whether you're "commercial". Tell your own stories, draw your own pictures. Let other people follow you.

I am an expressionist and by that I mean that I'm not a photographer or a writer or a painter or a tap dancer, but rather someone who expresses himself according to his needs.

Holding on to some of your uniqueness is the trick instead of surrendering it at the Academy of Contemporary We're Gonna Make You a Star.

Precocious and eccentric are okay. But I think that people in the arts represent something integral and kind of secretive in everybody else. So the reason people like some artists is because they're saying or doing something that they would like to do or say, but they don't have the balls or the means. People are really afraid to put their ass on the line. Just to put your face on a poster and put your name in big print and say "Come see me," that takes some cojones, you know? Ambition is nothing to be ashamed of.

When the individuality of the artist begins to express itself, what the artist gains in the way of liberty he loses in the way of order.

I want to be identified as a writer, not a Southern writer, not a woman writer, not a woman from this or that place, but unfortunately it doesn't always happen.

I'm always doubting because I've been told so much that, you're not the right look or you're not the right sound, and, you know, whether I do jazz or R&B there are always complaints.

Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.

They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist.

I didn't want to imitate anybody. Any movement I knew, I didn't want to use.

I have the instincts of a minstrel rather than those of a scrivener. There you have it. We are not of the same trade at all and so how can your rules fit me?

I used to sing like Nat King Cole. I mean he was the guy when I was comin' up, and you know, man, people used to say of me, "Damn, he sure do sound like Nat King Cole." But there was a day, and luckily for me it was early, when I woke up and asked myself, "Well, when are the ask me to sing because I sound like me?" So my advice is, never do anything that you don't like.