James McBride Quotes

The rule I stand by as an artist is definitely be yourself, and don't make music just for other people: make it for you first.

I've never been one to sit back and go, 'I'd better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don't want to lose them.'

To be honest, I'm selfish as an artist. I'm doing what I want to do and what I want to hear.

When I make movies, I don't ever go out there to please anyone other than myself. I never try to make a film for the masses. I just try to tell my story.

What is the art world? I never really understood. I started doing this stuff to do what I want to do. Not to be this or that.

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.

I can only say that I myself wrote always as I wished, without a tremendous desire to find the latest thing possible.

I want to be my own artist and reflect my creativity.. I don't want to be turned into a pop princess; that's not who I am.

I'm not trying to appeal to anybody. I just try to do my thing and make the best music I can make.

If you enjoy and become a fan of Tony Rock, I really appreciate it! But, I do my comedy for me, so I don't try and please everyone or appease anyone. In the end, it's for me.

It's really tough to make a name for yourself without compromising and without fitting yourself into a real specific mold. When I made the choice that I would be involved in every aspect of music and not necessarily make music for radio or MTV, I was saying, 'OK, this is me. You decide who it is.'

I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.

At the end of the day I have to please myself. And I've made a record to please myself.

To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel - not the way others think you should feel.

As a self-published author, you have the choice. Embrace the power to create a book that is truly yours. Don't be a whiner or a copycat.

I, in the end, make art for myself.

You know, we have our own audience, and it's not like - they just know we're not going to do certain things.

I just don't like to do a lot of the normal things expected of other artists. I'm not trying to be difficult; I'm just trying to stick with what it is I want to do.

When you make a solo record, it's you. It's your name. It has to be the right songs for how you feel.

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

The most important thing for me as an artist is having an identity.

I don't write for a particular audience. I work as an artist, and I think the audience of one, which is the self, and I have to satisfy myself as an artist. So I always say that I write for the same people that Picasso painted for. I think he painted for himself.

I work as an artist, and I think the audience of one, which is the self, and I have to satisfy myself as an artist. So I always say that I write for the same people that Picasso painted for. I think he painted for himself.

I can't think of anything worse, really, than to try to live up to someone else's expectations of what you should be. You don't make art by consensus.

My art and my creativities were totally something that was of my own heart and mind. I could never let anybody dictate to me what I should write and how I would write it.