August Wilson Quotes

I, in the end, make art for myself.

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.

All any artist can do is please themselves.

I never think about what others are doing. I do a film for myself, not others.

I only write music for myself, I don't try and appeal to anyone else.

I consider myself first of all an artist. My work is about my creativity - why I create and not for whom.

My primary thing is to make a painting, not necessarily to make a painting to sell for gazillions of dollars, but just to make a painting.

I'm not looking to be an artist to make money. I'm looking to be an artist.

I don't believe that artists really are interested in money. That's not the motivation for art.

I think every artist would love to just please themselves musically all day long.

I think as long as you're being creative and finding your own work interesting, that's all that matters.

Which implies that the real issue in art is the audience's response. Now I claim that when I make things, I don't care about the audience's response, I'm making them for myself. But I'm making them for myself as audience, because I want to wake myself up.

Even though what I do does enter the market, it doesn't interest me. I am exclusively concerned with the formal qualities of my work. It is about the need and the right to self-expression.

I can't help other people's frustrations. I don't owe people anything. If people would like to come to my concerts, I'd love them to come. And if they like the music that I make, I love that, too. But I do not make music for other people. I make it to please myself.

I suppose we'll make money off our album and our singles and stuff, but, like, they were made as we wanted them, exactly with what we had to say, and done exactly how we wanted them, right? And, like, we didn't put them out to make money. We put them out because we wanted to do them, do you know what I mean?

I don't do any art to please any people.

I create music for myself first of all because if I'm not happy with the music I create, I can't make anybody else happy.

I just make music that I love. I'm kind of selfish when I make music. I'm like, 'Do I like this?'

When I did TV shows and my other movies, I never try to do it for anybody. I just do what I think is good no matter what the genre is.

I write to please myself.

The first audience that you have when writing a book is you.

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

One doesn't make art for other people, even though I am very concerned with the viewer.

Satisfying myself is the point in filmmaking, in my mind.

We make music for a living. Like I've always said, if you like what you're doing, you're halfway there; if someone else likes it, that's even better. If they don't like it, at least you like it. Not to be selfish, but you kind of have to be.