Anthony Jeselnik Quotes

I have no idea what the audience makes of me.

My songs are the reflection of how I think and how I feel in that moment. But I'm conscious of the fact that artists have a responsibility before the masses and they have to take care with their words.

I hope they get something of interest out of it, but I'd rather they all hate it and I like it, instead of vice versa... I make films to please myself first, and if the audience likes them, all the better.

I put myself in the place of the listener when editing my writing. The last thing that I want to do is be preached at and told who to be or what to think when listening to an artist. However, I do want to be inspired. There's a fine line.

You can't plan for people to like your movies. I knew that people were not going to run in droves to the theater for the 'In the Valley of Elah.' I knew they might not want to see it, but I still had to the movie; I felt very strongly about it. Wanting to keep telling a good story is what you want to do, a compelling story.

I want people to come see my films and enjoy them, but at the end of the day you can't control what people think.

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

As a director, you never think about how an audience would respond. You can think about that, but you will never change what you're going to do.

I make films that are what they are. Some people like them, and some people don't.

My films are as much for the people as they are for me. The reception affects me, but doesn't change me as a person. That's important.

You do these movies, you give it out to the world and you really have no idea how people are going to react to you.

I was criticized by some people for my first album because they said I was taking sacred music. They knew nothing about what I was doing. That was no sacred music; that's music I wrote.

While I hope that people like my work, I don't think an artist should be afraid of ­people not liking his work.

It's okay if someone is disgusted or offended by my performance. It's just a performance.

I don't feel I have to be Jackson Browne. Still, I like to say something.

Occasionally, we would shoot something and think, 'This is it; we are over the line.' But the test audiences didn't have a problem with it.

You can't control how an audience responds to something. It's up to them.

I know I'm not the kind of music that's going to have tons of screaming fans, and I'm not gonna be everyone's cup of tea. I just want to do as good a job as I can.

I don't like post-modernism. It's cynical, and takes no discipline - you just copy. It doesn't allow a film to be open to reality.

I would never make a film because I think it's going to be a box-office success.

A lot of theatre people are definitely not conservative, but I don't think liberals get to own the culture.

For me, what matters is who are you working with, what you are working on, and when all that fits naturally, I let it go. Then, I don't care if it is bold or if it needs me to be uninhibited. I just want the role that I am playing to come out the way it should.

I completely follow my gut and do what I like doing. I have become impulsive in a good way. I am taking creative risks as an actor.

I need an audience to look at what I've done so I can understand it, so I can step back and watch them respond and figure out what they're understanding about what I'm trying to do and what they're confused about.

Use your imaginations, and use your empathy. If you don't do that, you're limiting yourself as an artist, and you're hurting the world.