Darren Boyd Quotes

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.

I would never tell someone else how to use their platform, because I think I'm much more comfortable allowing the work that I do to speak for itself.

We got full artistic integrity and autonomy over what we were doing, and that was the main important thing that kept our band alive.

It doesn't matter even if I am slow or fast as long as my films are honest and carries my integrity.

If some actress thinks she is sexy and she can dance, it's her choice. I do what I want to do, and I set my own benchmark. I will never compare myself with anyone.

Very few artists are as independent as I am mentally, physically, spiritually and technically. I sit in my home studio and record things by myself. I don't need to get anybody's approval or validation.

If I'm going to go out to be a solo artist, it's because I want to do something different without having to wait on someone else's schedule or hobbies or be limited by other people's prejudices. I'd be kind of stupid not to exercise that.

I want to be remembered as somebody that tried to respect her integrity as an artist and as a person. And I don't want to be in any box. I don't want to be one thing.

I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine.

I came to filmmaking because it's my passion. I decided I can't have it distorted or marred by someone else deciding what it should be.

My job is to just express something that I want to express. And if I'm ahead or behind the curve, that's for others to decide.

I don't like people telling me what to do, or trying to MAKE me write songs.

I've never been one to sit back and go, 'I'd better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don't want to lose them.'

I need to find a way of retaining creative control.

I know that after my letter there will be undoubtedly an 'opinion' about me, but I am not afraid of it. I openly say what I think. Talent, of which we are proud, must not be submitted to the assaults of the past.

They say I'm insane because I need to have so much creative control. They say I'm unmanageable, but I'm not. I just know what I like. I'm obsessed with it. If you can't control it, that's like having somebody else paint your pictures. How could you do that? I never could.

I can't be a spokesman for anything other than my own concerns. I have to be free to wrestle with my own preoccupations, and if I'm bringing any political awareness to that process, that mitigates my freedom.

Writing for myself and writing for another artist are two very different experiences. When I handle both the story and the art, I have full control. I can endlessly tweak every word and every line.

To maintain one's individuality, integrity, and true personality in the theatre is a big task.

You can't live your life trying to please people. You be courteous and you be respectful, but you've got to do things in the way that you want to do them.

If you consider the definition of authenticity, it's saying something and actually doing it. I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It's all authentic.

I've had a lot of voices tell me what I should be making. Personally, I would much rather live and die by my own hand. If my stuff sucks, then at least I made it suck. I didn't allow some person, some old dude in a suit, to make it suck for me.

I couldn't be an artist who was told what to do, what to be, what to sing.

I just never want to do anything that's going to compromise what I do. It would have to be a song where there would be honest discussion about something.

There's nothing, nobody can pay me enough money and nobody can do enough for me to wear something I don't want.