Devin Townsend Quotes

Today, they're just up there for the money, just packaged and be gone.

They say, 'We will give you money, but we want you to play this or that.' And I always thought, 'If I'm going to do that, I might as well go back and be a dishwasher.'

Limitations can be hugely creative and hugely inspiring - so long as they are the ones you choose for yourself. I will not allow anyone to take anything off my palette, but if I do, then within that, I can be creative.

I am not going to be dictated to by fans, certainly. I am dictated enough to by my record company to last me a million years.

I think more money can be very detrimental to movies and TV because things get solved economically rather than creatively, and that's never a good solution.

It's a tough thing to know that when you're making your album, you're going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.

I go back and forth between indie and studio because I feel like it, not because I feel obligated to do one or the other.

I've never been told to do anything. I've never been hurried along by anybody - the kind of so-called 'pressure' of record labels doesn't really exist in my case.

There are no rules when I'm making stuff. That's why I'm glad I'm not signed. No one's telling me I got to drop this type of single or this video.

My dream is to do whatever I want without any interference from the record company.

I'm constantly being courted by labels and their backing. Obviously the market is there when you talk about the economics and the numbers, but it's hard to give up the freedom of being able to do whatever you want.

The only way in which one human being can properly attempt to influence another is by encouraging him to think for himself, instead of endeavoring to instill ready-made opinions into his head.

There isn't any question that Hollywood is profit driven. Anybody that thinks it isn't is a fool. It's a business. Hollywood was never philanthropy. The only purpose it had was making money; the only purpose it still has is to make money.

I found collaboration to be a terrible thing in Hollywood because there are so many people involved you have to make a thousand little compromises to every project and every single scene is a committee decision. It's maddening. But with comics you've got an artist and you've got a writer.

When I'm making my music, I'm writing it, I'm producing it, I'm playing all the instruments, I'm performing. It's my own world where I do what I feel, and nobody tells me anything.

The allure becomes, "Can I make these rooms bigger?" Can I fill these 1,500-seat rooms? Then the allure is, how much, if we're being honest, how much can I squeeze out of it financially?

There's big studio films I didn't want to do. I didn't want to go through the hoops and ladders. I wouldn't have been able to work with the directors I've worked with if I did those studio films.

Independent films are very hard to get made, but I'm lucky enough to get them made, so I'm going to keep doing it. I like my independence. I like being able to tell a story the way I want to tell a story. I don't like developing it with a team. I like coming to a story and deciding whether I want to do it or not.

Ultimately I want to be able to create whatever I want whenever I want. And if that doesn't work, I don't mind just doing weird plays.

For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself.

I enjoy doing independent films more, only because there's more freedom. There's not as many cooks tampering with what you are trying to do.

In the stand-up comedy top, there's room for everyone - if you're good, there's room for everyone. You'll put on your own show - no one casts you. You cast your own show as a stand-up comedian. When you get good at stand-up comedy you book a theater and if people show up, people show up. If people don't show up, people don't show up. You don't have a director or a casting agent or anybody saying if you're good enough - the audience will decide.

Each brushstroke is a decision.

I never get myself in a situation where I don't have creative freedom.

When it comes to picking parts, I do make an effort to choose parts that I want to do, and not necessarily parts someone else wants me to do, or parts that someone else is going to respond to.