Lena Waithe Quotes

Artists are definitely, like, under a sort of microscope of scrutiny more than others.

I think there was a point in the past when I felt that my options as an artist were either to make race a nonissue and deny its impact on life and just say, "Don't think of me as an Asian cartoonist. Just think of me as a cartoonist."

In civic life, I think that's where you can debate what is good taste and what is acceptable to other people, and what's gonna offend people. Do that there, but leave it out of art, because art is the one frontier that shouldn't have restraints put on it.

Unfortunately, you're helpless when people interpret your work wrongly. There are simply people who can't or won't understand or accept what you're trying to do. When you take the risk of expressing yourself in public, you have to open yourself to that possibility.

I kind of think that artists throughout history, poets throughout history have been criticized for sharing what's on people's minds and I don't think it's any different now.

Anything can be misinterpreted. People can look at Christ on a cross and think, This is an image of murder, this is violent, this has sexual imagery in it. And it just - I think it's my job as an artist to be out there pushing people's buttons and making them question everything.

Being an actress, it's hard to publish things without people thinking everything is autobiographical.

You really can't be a good artist if you can't say what you really feel. And people may be offended, but, you know, that's how you feel, and that is your right, and that is your gift as well.

I think the people who are saying jazz has to sound a particular way, or "what you're doing isn't jazz," are just scared because they can't do it. A lot of them just aren't talented enough to do anything new, honestly. It's the people who are talented enough and who have the open mind and who are forward-thinkers are the ones who are doing something new. You tend to hate on what you can't produce.

On "Tonight" I think I was torn dreadfully between writing what I wanted to write, but keeping it in a style that would follow up what I had just done. That's where I feel I was untrue to myself as an artist . . . that album and, to a lesser extent, "Never Let Me Down."

... the great artists ... do not want security, egoistic or materialistic.

I never put myself in that box of you're an Oscar winner so you can only do this or that. That's one award, one night, and it does not define my career or it does not define me as an artist. I never wanted to get put in that Oscar box because that's a lonely place to be.

It's difficult to really be an artist nowadays. People are just on another page. You have a society that needs you to say something, but they don't want to give you the environment to be able to be just a functioning, happy, normal person. It's like, the industry is at odds with you, the society is at odds with you. You start to live in this very confined box where it's like, It's "me" and "them."

What other people think of me is not really my major concern in life. What other people think of what I write is another matter.

Vulnerability of artists is definitely what makes organizations like PEN necessary because, as I tried to argue, the actual work that writers and artists do has an ornery way of surviving. Particularly in this age of the internet, it is very easy for forbidden work to be found online somewhere if you know where to look. Artists themselves, however, are in increasing danger, and not just artists. The great concern is that year after year, rising numbers of journalists are being killed in pursuit of their work.

Political correctness is the fascism of the 90's, it is this rigid feeling that you have to keep your ideas and your way of looking at things within very narrow boundaries or else you'll offend someone. Certainly one of the purposes of journalism is to challenge just that way of thinking, and certainly one of the purposes of criticism is to break boundaries, that's also one of the purposes of art.

However, I have a lot of greed. The types of music I want to show are on this side and on that side. Conclusively, if I'm able to make good music and people continue to look for my music, won't this kind of controversy get better... is my thought.

I think artists should be able to do different things whenever they want and I like the way I am. I'm like - I ain't gonna say the only street rapper, but the only mainstream, new, young street rapper there is right now and I'm doing well with it.

The artist must know how far to go too far.

I think that we have a unique opportunity as performers and artists to be kind of the town criers and also to get more people to listen, so that's a blessing and a responsibility that I take very seriously.

One of the things I love about doing things that are creative is that I feel like it's my right as an artist not to be affected by the reactions of those people that are going to hear my songs.

I think I've been lucky in the regard to have a team that sees me as an artist.

As far as what people think of me, maybe my stuff should just be put online for free downloads when I'm gone.

I've learned a lot about the limits of what I can do, as an artist, or what I'm willing to do. It's a lot of responsibility to carry a show and to speak to people on different levels.

We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, his donn´e: our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it.