Robert Eggers Quotes

You have kids studying master class visual arts who are pushed to make films that will be successful economically; that's what they focus on. So they work for corporate interest instead of artistic expression.

In no way am I demeaning writing or any other form of art because it's popular. What I'm saying is that anything fed into the industrial machinery to comply with rules of size and length and shelf-life has a hard time surviving as art.

I hate the idea of genres.

I dislike labels like 'commercial' and 'non commercial.'

I hate genres. I think they're just marketing labels.

I've lost so many gigs composing commercial or television music because I can't repress my inclination to work against conventions.

Self-censorship is the most devastating thing for an artist.

My job is not to make you happy. As a filmmaker and as an actor, my job is not to make you feel happy. If you're used to those kind of films, don't come and watch my films.

A solution built by an artist serves the artist more than the solution the capitalist comes up with.

Creativity should be balanced with commercial interests.

The spirit of Burzum never changed, but my ability to make music changed dramatically when I was imprisoned. It is more or less impossible to record music in prison, and the only music I could record was electronic music, when I was allowed to have a synthesizer for a few months in 1994 or 1995 and in 1998.

I really like a lot of American country stuff, so my music has that influence, but I don't like to be set within a genre. It feels very limiting.

What I don't like is when people feel like they can box an artist into who they think an artist should be.

I spent the first part of my career trying to avoid genre because I felt like genre, in some way, was cliche.

I think a lot of times we think of music as being different from other art forms. You would never ask a sculptor or painter, 'Go paint this because you'll get paid more,' you know what I mean?

When you're working in service to a big project, there's always the question of, 'Is there total freedom to do what I think is right artistically, or is this a job?' It's okay for things to be a job. I'm perfectly comfortable working. I don't need to sit around and quench whatever personal artistic thirst I have at all times.

R&B needs to see a new light. It doesn't have to be pigeonholed.

Rules limit you, and once you start thinking about what the audience wants or expects, it becomes a trap that a lot of artists fall into.

People always try to pigeonhole you, especially the media, who are happy if they can label you as a particular kind of artist. But the spectrum of songs I write and record is vast.

People keep trying to say I'm one type of artist and I'm just not.

I simply loathe the crude 1960s distinctions between commerce and art. For me, Warhol and pop obliterated all of those separations - that was the whole point of the Brillo Boxes and Campbell's Soup Cans. And believe it or not, in 2009, moronic journalists are still saying to me, 'Your work is so commercial.'

The less subsidy we have, the more the 'producers' take over, and the 'bottom line' becomes the raison d'etre. That's quite an unappealing landscape for artists.

I think filmmaking should be a wonderfully free collaborative process, and it so very rarely is. I often see directors as jailers of my talent.

Art may varnish and gild, but it can do no more.

I don’t think ‘science fiction’ is a very good name for it, but it’s the name that we’ve got. It is different from other kinds of writing, I suppose, so it deserves a name of its own. But where I can get prickly and combative is, if I’m just called a sci-fi writer. I’m not. I’m a novelist and poet. Don’t shove me into your damn pigeonhole, where I don’t fit, because I’m all over. My tentacles are coming out of the pigeonhole in all directions.