Ann Reinking Quotes

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

There's a good many pictures I'd like to make; we'll see how many I'll be allowed to make.

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

It's a big responsibility to help someone express themselves as an artist.

There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit or unlit, as the world allows.

What is exciting is taking back the excitement of being able to debut something to an audience in exactly the way you want to.

Any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.

When you give an artist a canvas, you shouldn't tell him exactly how much paint to put on it, or exactly how sharp the images should be. You should let the artist get going.

When I act, I feel like I am a color in someone else's painting - I can be the best blue that there is, but I'm still only part of their entire picture - but, with music, when I am performing with Reserved For Rondee, I am the painter, you know?

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.

In the band Semi-Precious Weapons, I got to sing, wear, and say exactly what I wanted for ten years.

I'm doing the shows. The stage is my canvas; I'll put whatever up there for the visible eye.

I don't consider myself an entertainer. I consider myself an artist, and I think with that comes responsibility.

I think people should just make art and let the art speak for itself.

You cannot just be the feature act, not that that's a bad thing, because that's a good thing, especially nowadays. But as an artist, you want to express yourself and you want to know what you want to express.

I don't get why radio shows allow artists to do shows without creative control, without any art direction at all. Instead of that, I get their press guys, their camera guys to be my backdrop of my show.

I like artists to have some freedom.

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

When the individuality of the artist begins to express itself, what the artist gains in the way of liberty he loses in the way of order.

Having total freedom to direct my own movies is more difficult than those I was hired for, where the framework has been already furnished. Unlike with my own work, I don't have to deny or feel embarrassed at the straightforwardness or orthodoxy of the directorial style, because I can say in excuse, "This is how I was asked to direct by those people."

There is no must in art because art is free.

If people would like to come to my concerts I'd love them to come. And if they like the music that I make, I love that too. But I do not make music for other people. I make it to please myself.

As actors, we are so privileged to do what we do and to give to the world and to choose the subject we want to say to the world.

It was liberating to do comedy. It felt like playing in a jazz band.

I just wanted to be an artist. I didn't care how or what; I just wanted to express my artistic integrity, and I wanted the world to have a vision of what I was seeing in my mind.