Paul Oakenfold Quotes

The music business is really, really small. The real music is becoming almost extinct, if you don't stay true to who you are.

Some writers' view of things depends upon the success of the final result. I'd rather stand or fall on my own concepts. But there is a fine line to be drawn between pointing up something or distorting it.

I like Modest Mouse. I'm our biggest fan. And enemy. I won't waste people's time by putting out a Modest Mouse record just because. That's fair, right?

I write my songs and just play them, so there are not a whole lot of fireworks. As long as the music comes first, it's OK to have some fireworks. But not the other way around.

I'm not trying to feed off of a concept that another artist had - that's not what I do.

I am not bothered with whether my characters are conventional or not. Because I am not in this for the designer labels and the autographs.

I've never recorded anyone else's songs. I'm not interested. If you gave me a song by Bono and Edge and promised me a number one hit with it I'd still say no. That, for me, is not the kind of success I want.

I really wanted a No. 1 single from my first album, but I would not do anything different. It was real and honest and I didn't pretend anything.

There has to be that zeal to do something new and surprise yourself and audiences. You have to stay true to your craft, and that should never be sidelined.

I got a lot of experience for my age. Some artists might take a line or two from a bunch of songs and snip it together and make something, but everything I say I do.

I dont ever want to do anything mediocre. I hear the music in the charts and I dont mean to be rude, but those people have no soul. Learning from music is like eating a meal - you have to pace yourself. You cant take everything from it all at once. I want to be different, definitely. Im not a one trick pony. Im at least a five-trick pony.

I make movies that I enjoy making and tell stories that I want to see, so it’s hard. You never reverse engineer those things and go, “What would appeal to this or that?” Even if I tried, I don’t know. I’m an all-American kid.

It always felt like you were trying too hard to look like the audience or something. That whole thing about the artistic integrity, which, of course, I've never bought into - with any artist. It's just not a real thing.

I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.

The only real failure is trying to second-guess the taste of an audience. Nothing comes out of that except a kind of inward humiliation.

I paint what I see and not what others like to see.

Don't try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out.

Actors are responsible to the people we play. I don't label or judge. I just play them as honestly and expressively and creatively as I can.

What the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves. They've got their own vision, they have their own way of fracturing reality, and if it's authentic and true, you will feel it in your nerve endings.

As to the rest, I am no more guilty of imitating 'real life' than'real life' is responsible for plagiarizing me.

I think I have to expand my creativity a bit, because it's difficult for critics to be, "Oh, this person writes their own lyrics and sometimes writes their own beats and sometimes makes her own videos." They funnel me through, "Oh, is it as good as blah-blah's record, which has had 50 million writers on it?"

The moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist.

This industry's so full of distractions: partying, drinking, sex, money. The priority for me is just to make music that people can connect with. I want to make something fresh that people may not understand

The cliché of that sort of wasted, renegade, drugged-out musician of the '70s is kind of dead and gone now. And I suppose that a lot of people still keep relying on that, or some kind of image to perpetuate something that they think they're supposed to sound like. But that kind of takes you away from real inspiration and, you know, real artistic discovery of the individual.

Art has a will of its own. It has nothing to do with the taste of the moment or what's expected of you. That's a formula for dead art, or fashionable art.