Graham Parker Quotes

You know I've had work banned.

Criticism is something that you have to take, regardless of what you do. Even if you go out there and try to make the most vanilla, non-offensive TV show possible, people are going to criticize you for doing that. It's just part of the game.

Coming from The Disney Channel, anything I do is going to offend somehow, somewhere, somehow.

To be honest, after all the crap that happened with 'Summer Heights High,' I was like, 'I'm not going to write anything controversial or edgy ever again; I just can't handle the blame.'

I think a newspaper should be provocative, stir 'em up, but you can't do that on television. It's just not on.

I will never be a fan of any kind of political correctness: I think it's instant death to creativity.

I don't Tweet a lot because I've Tweeted things that I thought were really innocuous about subjects that are inflammatory, and the response is so insane sometimes from people.

I'm deeply stressed as a filmmaker, and I know I'm not alone. The censorship crisis, the moral policing, the politics of it has most of us on edge. I'm scared to use certain words: like, if I use 'Bombay,' will there be a problem?

I don't have any interest in filmmakers making statements just for the sake of being provocative.

And I love the hate mail I get, the unsigned, misspelled letters I get telling me to go back to Russia or wherever.

Obscenity is a notable enhancer of life and is suppressed at grave peril to the arts.

There's a lot of hate mail from readers. There's hate mail, threats, stalkers... I think that I'm bulletproof every week when I've turned something in. I think, I'm a god.

I've always enjoyed Twitter. I enjoy it a lot less now that I'm in WWE, I'll be honest. Because the number of idiots that have access to you is exponentially more. I feel like people shouldn't be able to tweet whatever they want without consequences.

There is no known device for artistic contraception.

I'm wearing pants, for f---'s sake. Lay off. I mean, it's not like I'm a f---ing lead miner. There are harder jobs in the world. But when people feel the freedom to create Tumblr accounts about my c---, I feel like that wasn't part of the deal ... But whatever. I guess it's better than being called out for the opposite.

You have to remember the police used to raid and arrest the audience for seeing Scorpio Rising (1964), or Jack Smith movies. Wouldn't that be exciting today, if you see went to the movie and everyone at the IFC was arrested in a paddy wagon and taken away?

When you're dealing with TV and with movies, people dont take it as serious as they do with music. If a rapper does a song about shooting people on the block, and goes into a restaurant or grocery store, people grab their purses because they're afraid the person is violent. With TV and movies, people know it's okay, it's just a script.

An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.

I curated this show [Shanghai Biennale ], I was by no means trying to shock people or be controversial.

In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. Only under a dictatorship is literature expected to exhibit an harmonious design or an inspirational tone.

If we ban whatever offends any group in our diverse society, we will soon have no art, no culture, no humor, no satire. Satire is by its nature offensive. So is much art and political discourse. The value of these expressions far outweighs their risk.

I think it was a modest thing I did (Fahrenheit 9/11) ... this is an election year ... I'm not telling them how to vote. I'm saying get information about the issues ... at first there's just silence, then there's 'Yeah!' and then there's 'Boo' ... I have never seen a reaction like this, in all my years of touring ... Clear Channel can't threaten to not play my records because they are not going to play them anyway.

If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read.

People ask could I have written the show I wrote in 1990 now, and I don't think I could. I think it's much easier to offend people nowadays. People have grown quite sensitive, I think.

How anybody expects a man to stay in business with every two-bit wowser in the country claiming a veto over what we can say and can't say and what we can show and what we can't show - it's enough to make you throw up. The whole principle is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.