Neil Young Quotes

It will never be perfect, but perfect is overrated. Perfect is boring on live TV.

I find that the quest to be perfect and make perfect music is like a black whole. I realize that you can come with the intention to capture a vibe and use a formula, but you have to accept that most of the time its not going to be what you envisioned and you might manifest something better. I think that's been the hardest thing to wrap my head around that most ideas we go for ends up sounding different. I think art in general should be about enjoying the process and the experience. All that matters is if you feel the music and it captures the element your going for.

No matter what you do, it can't be perfect. I told Jack White, 'If I'd 'a sung that song more'n twice, it might of sounded better.' He said, 'Well, it might not of. You might have took the spark out of it.' I don't know if he has a point or not. We'll find out.

With 'Girls'... I feel like there's an impulse to try to make it look better or neater or more perfect, and when I watch theater, television, movies, it's always the imperfection I'm always more attracted to.

A lot of my albums that I've done, a lot of the songs have been the first take. It's before you mess with it too much - you can take away all the spontaneity and the emotion of something by trying to make it sound perfect.

If there is some art involved, I'd like it to be that it came through the cracks of daily work.

It's really easy to project this whole ideology of what being an artiste is, and I'm just not down with intellectualizing it. I just think, if you feel like doing something, then do it.

I like the spontaneity; I like to just get people together and hit 'record' so hopefully it has got a liveliness about it.

A lot of my albums that I've done, a lot of the songs have been the first take. It's before you mess with it too much - you can take away all the spontaneity and the emotion of something by trying to make it sound perfect.

Cleanliness is the scourge of art.

All I know is real life. I don't know how to act. I don't know how to pretend.

I like a performance, a live performance, so I like little mistakes because that's what makes perfect - the mistakes.

R&B and all that stuff was always very spare and spontaneous. Nobody made those records under solid gold situations. It was just in and out, and you didn't labor over the thing. I like music like that.

I can't make a perfect record. When I try to, I bleed all the feeling out of it.

I don't want to make a perfect film because perfect films are boring and cold.

Nothing stops the forward march of any creative endeavor like the need to do it absolutely perfectly. And who is to judge what is 'perfect' anyway? What I have judged full of flaws so many others have called terrific. Maybe the definition of Perfection is something that actually gets done.

I don't like records that are the same from beginning to end, that are too styled and slick. Everything is so designed and airbrushed and Botoxed, it makes us think, 'Oh, everybody's perfect except me. Everything's smooth except me.' But nothing is smooth.

Do not finish your work too much. An impression is not sufficiently durable for its first freshness to survive a belated search for infinite detail; in this way you let the lava grow cool.

I just think that's more exciting. When people used to cut records live, there were mistakes all the time that stayed in. It was part of the charm. You're kind of missing something if everything is all doctored-up and clinical. So when we hear a mistake that sounds interesting, we make a point to keep it.

Music really isn’t supposed to be perfect. It’s all about people relating to each other and doing something that’s really from the soul. It must come from the soul.

My Heart I'm not going to cry all the time nor shall I laugh all the time, I don't prefer one "strain" to another. I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie, not just a sleeper, but also the big, overproduced first-run kind. I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar. And if some aficionado of my mess says "That's not like Frank!," all to the good! I don't wear brown and grey suits all the time, do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera, often. I want my feet to be bare, I want my face to be shaven, and my heart--you can't plan on the heart, but the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

[Stanley] Kubrick was a great artist and a perfectionist. He always wanted the exact right thing. He did a million takes. Everything had to be perfect. I'm an imperfectionist. I don't really care that much about the work. I write quickly. I'm careless. I shoot carelessly.

To be creative and spontaneous, you have to live with imperfection.

There are fine things that are more brilliant when they are unfinished than when finished too much.

What you create doesn't have to be perfect.