Jenji Kohan Quotes

I don't believe that I should just do A-movies, I just do the work as an artist.

I really want to be associated with great projects and character driven projects and films. I have to feed my soul, and keep feeling like an artist and keep being challenged.

I'm not the type of woman who shows off my body; I'm a vocalist and I'm a writer and I think people see that more so than they see anything else. That's just who I am.

My background is inseparable from my work.

It has always been important to me to be a creative artist, not to be a star, not to be rich, not to be famous.

I feel like I'm a creative, and I want to take advantage of that.

I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician.

I didn't know whether to join the army or go to art college.

My music definitely comes from a place of experience. Everything connects to a truth.

If I had been brought up in America, I think I would still have had the same sort of job as a writer.

I got a sociology degree and then had an opportunity to go to graduate school. But I said no, because I wanted to give songwriting a shot.

I think I am more liberated as an artiste in my late 40s.

There are all kinds of pretensions about art, but I'm just a guy who sings for his supper.

All that I've done in my life thus far, all the poems and all the pictures, are not so much an intermingling of my life with art but a divine accident.

I'm a pop artist, and that's what I'll always be. I don't want to be a 'credible artist.'

I consider myself first of all an artist. My work is about my creativity - why I create and not for whom.

I don't want to be just that transgender performer or that transgender musical artist. I want to create songs and art and have those be judged on their merit alone.

I think the range of my life shows in my work.

After I got back my career and my artistic freedom in 1982, my golden rule is the music must never suffer.

I think my music covers a broader sound than just 'Tropical House'... My goal is to simply be a great producer in my own right without being pigeonholed.

I'm just concerned with going about my business and making the records I want to make.

Early on, when I wrote 'Little Man Tate,' I got pigeonholed. Somebody said to me, 'You're not very dark,' and I had trouble getting certain kinds of jobs... and I learned very early that I didn't want to get pigeonholed as anything. And my next script was 'Dead Again.'

I feel like Prince's artistry inspired me as far as staying true to myself and my artistry and what is important to me in my life and applying, you know, all the things that I ever been through into my music, the same way he kinda did in 'Purple Rain.'

Sometimes directors come to me when I have to play some horrible thing, scary or hysterical or crying; they ask, 'Did you study somewhere to be an actress?' No, this is life. That's why I think I don't want to say you need a really bad experience to be a good artist, but bad experiences in your life say something.

I don't want to be just a performer.