Amanda Shires Quotes

I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

I have to be able to be the artist that I am.

What happens with artists, or people who start off doing things for the right reasons, is that you slowly start to paint yourself into a corner by doing what people outside of the creative world are asking you to do, and I think that's antithetical to being an artist.

It's about being true to my artistry, which I've been doing. It's super important to do smart films.

It doesn't matter even if I am slow or fast as long as my films are honest and carries my integrity.

Young people have realised that an artist is in charge of what they're doing - this crazy cynicism that artists were puppets has disappeared.

I want to make decisions as to where I want to go as an artist, and to get to it in my own way

I want to make music that I like; not something that I have to make because I think it's going to sell.

Every script I've written and every series I've produced have expressed the things I most deeply believe.

I've never been one to sit back and go, 'I'd better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don't want to lose them.'

I'm not an artist who has an agenda that's set by the work.

I left because I could no longer make records that sounded less and less like me. I tried to please people instead of believing in my own strength, until the only thing I could do was walk away.

My sin as a painter is that I just want to paint anything I want to paint - and repaint.

Putting out commercial pieces and promoting them and trying to sell them to people is not necessarily what it means to be an artist.

We are going to finish this picture just the way I want it... because you cannot compromise an artist's vision.

There's not a lot of art forms where you can control your presentation and your ideas.

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.

I think you write the film that you want to see, and you try and do it honestly, and you can't control people's responses, really.

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?

My artistic manifesto exists in the world as poetry. So even though most of the things that I've done have been on other people's projects or could be pigeonholed in certain ways, that's not how I perceive myself.

My visual medium is my videos, and I've got to feel as though I can put my truth in that.

I'd love more production houses to encourage artists to create what they want and not just churn things out.

Art should be able to be innovative without compromising itself. That's why I believe artists should have bigger preoccupations than checking the price tags on their work or becoming curators' darlings.

Some musicians feel they have to provide what their audiences expect. They lose the distinction between an artist and an entertainer. I am not an entertainer.