Mary Chapin Carpenter Quotes

I don't try to make the guitar sound like the harpsichord or lute. That makes you end up being like a bad copy.

There's no point that an album should sound like a watered down version of another album.

What is nice about country music today is that most artists are not trying to do something everybody else is doing. They really are trying to develop their own uniqueness.

I think it is - the biggest plus the performer can have is to be a little unique.

Music should not be a contest, it should be an individual thing that each band is putting out from within themselves.

Go and see what others have produced, but never copy anything except nature. You would be trying to enter into a temperament that is not yours and nothing that you would do would have any character.

I try to never repeat a character. I always try to find something new and fresh and interesting that inspires me.

Never be less interesting than your refrigerator magnets.

No 'mise en scène' has the right to be repeated, just as no two personalities are ever the same. As soon as a 'mise en scène' turns into a sign, a cliché, a concept however original it may be, then the whole thing - characters, situation, psychology - become schematic and false.

We make films that we ourselves would want to see and then hope that other people would want to see it. If you try to analyze audiences or think there's some sophisticated recipe for success, then I think you are doomed. You're making it too complicated.

I never want to play a show where it feels overly programmed, processed, and all that. For anybody that comes to one of our shows, the goal for me is to make sure that's their show. That nobody else is going to see that show ever again. You know what I mean? I try to make it different every day.

I'm not going to be Rihanna. No one can be Rihanna except for Rihanna.

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.

If you're not trying to be real, you don't have to get it right. That's art.

It's no fun for me to cover a song and produce it the exact same way as it already exists. When I hear that happening, I have to say, 'What's the point?'

If you have something you do that's unique, you just end up in situations. Your art can take you to places without you working too hard to force something to happen.

Michael Fassbender is just a creative force: he finds authenticity in singularity with what he brings, and it's always authentic. He doesn't try to be creative and different for the sake of it.

If it feels like we're re-creating something rather than creating something, we don't do it.

I feel to look for perfection is a very dangerous path. More than that, it's dangerous because it doesn't exist. You can aim for it, but you already know you won't get there because it doesn't exist. Plus, I definitely think the flaws, little cracks, and accidents are a lot more interesting.

If you try to create someone else's performance, it becomes a facsimile of a facsimile.

Imitation is a caricature. Any imitation. Find out for yourself.

I think all artists have a different story to tell, and no story is the same.

I want to show my versatility and how diverse I am, how I approach the track, my rhythm, my melodies. It's something different. Sometimes, the things I do haven't ever been done.

We live through life, but we live through art, too. And in art, as in life, nothing is generalized. No one thing is a copy of the next. Everything is individual.

I made myself famous by writing 'songs' and lyrics about the beauty of the things I did and ugliness, too.