Maxwell Quotes

When you're in a band that's so big when you're young, you kind of lose your identity a little bit. You just become part of the band. I just needed to get away from it.

My life is way bigger than boxing or acting or being rich or being famous or endorsements.

I've done a lot of collaboration over the years, but right now I'm enjoying writing by myself and just being me again for a while.

My greatest achievement is being able to write records that are real snapshots of what's going on in my life. I won't repeat myself for the sake of commerce, or to please other people.

I want an identity outside of my work.

I didn't get hugely famous really quick. It was a slow, gradual process, so I was able to sort of grow into myself and figure out who I was and what I wanted without the glaring spotlight on me telling me who I was.

There was a period when I really had to ask myself, 'What does acting mean to me?' I'm not someone who's content being famous, with that whole lifestyle. I had to realize I could find a balance between what I like to do and what people think you're 'supposed' to do as an actress.

You know, I did not like being famous. It was a stressful and ugly time, and I'm glad it's over.

When you become famous super young, you learn how to behave by the rules because you're the one that has to take the stress. But that also creates a barrier that I really didn't want.

Every now and then, as a composer and producer, it's important to write music for yourself.

The main downside was that it [fame] happened so quickly and I didn't have time to establish what kind of person I wanted to be.

Now I'm able to align my work and creative life with who I am.

I made a lot mistakes that I'm grateful for, because I won't make them again and I won't let my artists make them, or I'll tell them, 'Don't do this.' A lot of them still make them anyway, but you can't be told things when you're doing your own thing.

My discrepancy with children in the industry is that they are made famous before they know who they are as human beings.

I loved being a rock and roll star, but it wasn't what I wanted in life.

I can only be who I am.

When I was younger, my whole sense of self-worth was based on whether or not I was working, which was awful. And I had a baby at 20 years old, so it wasn't just about me. At around the age of 30 there was a stretch where I wasn't working - certainly not on anything I liked, anyway - and I started to do other things.

For me, the magazine was always the heart of what my life was all about, and the other half was living the life.

Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art.

When I got into the music industry, I wasn't focused on being the most famous artist or even getting a major record deal. It was just to make music on my own terms or create my own image, do my own hair, do my own makeup.

People must insist on the right to say no, to be alone, to stand out from the herd. Creative artists can say all this in their own way and in their own field, by hard, rigorous work.

A lot of artists get famous overseas first. I don't know what it is here. I have a large underground following in the U.S., but I don't get the airplay as much as I do in, say, Australia. Over there, they can play whatever they like, it seems, but not so much here.

As I get older, the book projects are - liberating is one word, but they really are me.

As a young woman, I had been seeking experience, knowledge, truth, the stuff writers need in their work, but when the artist actually kicked in, I came to understand that in this romantic relationship I was not free to be myself, or to find myself, in order to begin the true work I needed to do.

It's not that I don't want to become famous or that I'm obsessed by my work as an actress, but it's all about not limiting myself, such as putting myself in a little jail that I can escape from.