Joe R. Lansdale Quotes

I'm literally am home making my own music unless I'm asked to be in somebody's house writing music for them.

I've always been sort of entrepreneurial. ... I felt that I needed to learn how to write and produce so I could write my own thing and not worry about Hollywood finding me.

I don't really set out to please anybody, and I don't think I ever have. I have occasionally been encouraged to try to write something specifically for the purpose of releasing it as a single to get radio play. Those are not my best songs, as a rule.

I get offers to do huge-budget music videos with big production companies all the time, but I have no interest.

I sometimes listen to music I made and find it to be something I wouldn't want to buy from a store, if there was a store. When it's like that, you have to make what you want to hear.

I've made sure that in any situation and with any record label, I'm allowed to write my own music.

I've had a different kind of career on the periphery of show business. I've never been on any kind of corporate timetable whereby every six months I have to pop out a record like a pulping mill. I've called my own shots. When I get tired, I take time off.

I want to be as creative as I want. I don't ever want to have to compromise; I don't ever want anybody ever to tell me what to do, I don't ever want to argue with somebody because of my vision.

I like to compose, but only for myself. I write my own lyrics and compose the music around them.

If you look at somebody like Bach, he didn't need collaborators to write for keyboards, cello, violin or anything else. I feel the same way about my music. The times that I have worked with other people, I've been very unhappy with the results.

I've always been very much in control of my music and my image, and I think one of the things I've been lucky about is I didn't bring a label on board until I really figured out who I was.

When I made 'Lil Boat,' my first mixtape, I didn't have a drop date, a due date. I didn't have critics rating on it; I was just making it. And then when I finished it, I dropped it at my own smoothness, at my own pace.

I like artists to have some freedom.

I have a feeling that art is something you do for yourself, and that any time you turn your decisions over to someone else you're postponing at best, your own development. The atmosphere of the workshop should be that of trying out one's own work and accepting the signals from others but not accepting the dictation of others because that is a violation of the spirit of art. Art can't be done by somebody else, it has got to be done by the artist.

Robert Gober, for example. He doesn't seem like somebody who is just going to show in a gallery that asks him to show. He's just making his work, and when he's ready, he's going to show it.

When I did TV shows and my other movies, I never try to do it for anybody. I just do what I think is good no matter what the genre is.

The amazing fact that one person can make his own film - I think animation is somewhat unique in that respect. I don't need to deal with lawyers. I don't need to deal with corporations. I don't need to deal with executives or agents or any of that. I can just sit at home and make a feature film. That's a wonderful experience. Each film I make gets more popular, more press and makes more money. So it's amazing that I've survived and actually prospered doing that sort of homegrown, cottage-industry filmmaking.

My greatest accomplishment is the freedom for doing what I want to do with my music...I love my freedom so I'm happy I am a free artist.

When I'm making my music, I'm writing it, I'm producing it, I'm playing all the instruments, I'm performing. It's my own world where I do what I feel, and nobody tells me anything.

Neither man nor God is going to tell me what to write.

I don't enjoy being told what to do, I'm not that kind of actor, I'm a thinking actor.

When artists connect to a system because they want to make a living, it's their own choice. In fashion, designers don't have that choice. I know everybody mentions Azzedine Alaïa, but he's been going for a long time in the system - showing to people, selling to clients - and I think it's admirable how he's transformed it into his own system in a way, but it's still a system.

There's very little money and very little freedom in doing it [webshows] for a major corporation. Doing things independantly is and always will be better I think, due to the recalcitrance of stubborn network hands.

I'm very fussy about how my records sound, but I'm very aware that because of the way they sound, I will never be a big-selling, mainstream artist because the public has gotten conditioned to hearing pop music in a certain way. And I don't do it that way.

For the artist, fulfillment of self consists not in marching in the ranks of the liberators but in being entered in the roll of the Masters. The artist tends to find himself in the position of a deserter from his social group or, at best, one who collaborates, with secret reservations.