Ricky Skaggs Quotes

I just like playing songs with happy vibes and good feelings.

I'll admit, sometimes I've paid the bills with acting. You know the phrase, 'It's one for the money, two for the showreel.' I don't want that as a director. I don't want to compromise myself. There's a big old wide world out there. I want to explore it.

My concern is to continue respecting my work as I've done since I began as an actor and I could only do that if I'm strong enough to keep on doing what I think best in an artistic way.

I feel a composer should not crave to sing songs because songs itself decides its voice. The films where I have given music, I have kept my option for the last. I like to make music and not necessarily singing all the songs.

I am completely open to doing a romantic comedy, but I will never do something just for the sake of doing a specific genre or because it's the time or place to do a different type of movie. I think that would be a huge mistake.

I'm not going to compromise my artistic integrity.

The reason I do small, independent movies is because I want to keep my soul intact and maintain some kind of integrity within this industry.

Don't make a film if it can't be the film you want to make. It's a joke, and a sick joke, and it'll kill you.

One has to completely humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were . . . . It happened bit by bit, until . . . you're doing exactly what you don't want to do with people you can't stand -- the people you hated when you were ten.

It's hard enough for me to write what I want to write without me trying to write what you say they want me to write which I don't want to write.

When money enters in - then, for a price, I become a liar - and a good one I can be whether with pencil or subtle lighting or viewpoint. I hate it all, but so do I support not only my family, but my own work.

At Pixar, I don't have to compromise at all. When I look at the finished "Toy Story 3," I don't sit and constantly think, oh, the actor was having a bad day, or oh, it rained and we couldn't use that set. The story that I wanted to tell is what is on screen, and I haven't had to compromise it one iota.

Not even for a million dollars would I paint a tree.

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.

I've failed a million times on stage. I've listened to notes that I knew weren't right. I've pitched ideas and let other people change them, knowing that it was the wrong choice. The question you have to ask yourself is: How do you want to fail? Do you want to fail in a way that feels like it respects your tastes and value system?

I dislike judging myself, but I will say I would be wealthy today if I had accepted all the films that have been offered to me with large sums of money. But I've always refused, in order to do what I felt like doing.

Well, that's the great thing about indie film, in general. If it's not subject to the constraints of too much pressure from the studio or marketing, and all of that, you get to actually present fuller characters and you get to have the dark side of the characters. That's usually what gets cut out.

I don't get particularly precious about things like this, though. Like the record company said, "We need a radio edit that delivers the hook" - I don't even know what they consider the hook in that song ["Oh No"] - "that delivers the hook sooner." So I'm like, "Okay. I see that." And they were all walking on eggshells, like is this going to be sacrilegious to me or something, to mess with this art I've created? And I'm like, "Great. I get to tinker with it, I get to mess with my song some more."

I've done big studio films and the big studio films I've done, I've tried to do the interesting ones and the ones where I could live with myself in the morning.

I pride myself on the fact that my work has no socially redeeming value.

If I can't make the kind of film that I want to make, then the hell with it.

Maybe I'll have something out by Christmas, maybe not. I don't know, I'm really trying to take my time and do what feels right. (about the next step in her music career)

The director has to win, because you should never force a director to shoot something they don't believe in.

When I was on the big labels, I never calculated what would make me sell more records. I just did what I did -no different than when I wrote songs for myself in high-school.

I may not get the opportunity to make movies for my whole life, but I'm going to make movies for the rest of my life. Maybe studios won't pay for it, but I'm going to do it because I love it. So, I just have to be proud of what I make, and what I'm trying to say in what I make. If people don't like it or people don't see it, that's beyond what I can control. I'm a storyteller, and people are going to listen or not and like it or not. That's only solidified over time.