Nicole Holofcener Quotes

When I'm painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It's only after a get acquainted period that I see what I've been about. I've no fears about making changes for the painting has a life of its own.

To me I think artists in general make a statement - and for the rest of their lives - every album, every book - are variations on a theme.

I'm sick of being self-referential. I don't want to do any more songs that can be accused of being personal.

There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn't bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.

I have the vanity to think that every play I have written is different from the previous ones. Yet, even though they are written in a different way, they all deal with the same themes, the same preoccupations. 'Exit the King' is also 'The Bald Soprano.'

If I'm writing a song for Karen Harding, I know I can't impose what I want to say onto her. I literally have to get into her headspace and think, 'what does she want to say?' When it comes to my stuff, it's the same. What can I write that's true to me?

Any change in my style depends on many things, but it's whatever fits the project. It's important to me to make style changes from time to time; it makes me feel alive as an artist. For instance, with 'Moonshine,' I'm doing all my own coloring. That's a new development!

The late 80s was quite a difficult time for me as an artist because I'd almost become a parody of myself. All people wanted was pink hair and for me to sing 'I Want to Be Free.' There's nothing wrong with either of those but people need to see you as a person for you to be an artist.

At first you're doing it for yourself, it's about what sounds good to you. It's about expressing yourself. Then you get comfortable as an artist and you find yourself and people get familiar.

When people asked to buy my work I always said no. I'd had this rather rarefied idea that I didn't want money going through my head while I was making work. But after the car crash I realized that none of my work was owned by anyone. After that, I grew up a bit.

What’s any artist, but the dregs of his work?

I had been working purely abstractly for so long, it was important for me to see whether I was working abstractly because I couldn't work any other way, or whether I was doing it out of choice.

I am a completely different person when I am working on different collections.

I was meticulously copying other art and then I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead.

If I write songs and I think they sound good, then that's it. That's what I do. I'm not a technical musician, which is fine for rock and roll.

A lot of people thought I got famous as a studio artist, then decided to cash in on it. But it actually was just a matter of survival for many years, and I felt it was really important for me to be able to say whatever I wanted with my street art and fine art.

I'm older now, and I been through that, like, 'Stop. Tell the truth, what I need to do?' And I think that's important, as far as artist, for me to stand for what I believe in, And a lot of times people don't like that, you know what I'm saying. You become a troubled artist, or, 'You don't listen,' but as long as I say 'Yeah, I'll do it!' I'm a good person.

[Personal life] doesn't affect my creative process. It just gives me more subjects to talk about. Basically whatever you put in your music is how you want people to view you.

It present to allow me to ask myself questions about what I'm doing. I think that's what visual art does - it either reminds you of something or allows you to question something. I don't know why Robert Motherwell; I love so many different artists.

I come from a generation where you put the art out and had the luxury to sit back and watch the world deconstruct it, and that was valued. Unfortunately now the work lives in a weird context.

It's funny, I don't even consider myself a rapper, I don't consider myself a designer, or even an actor. I just like creating stuff and trying to make good work, whatever it is. I don't care if it's designing toothbrushes. It's just making cool stuff to leave behind, that's all it is, it's nothing more.

I've really come into my own as an artist. I'm much more sure of my identity and understand it much better, and have accepted the fact that I like to jump around a lot in terms of who I am and what kind of music I create, and that it is okay - in fact, that is my main identity, the fact that I do that.

If I was an artist, and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art.

I am not by nature the kind of creator who is transgressive in order to be transgressive.

In reality, however, an artist is a product of art