Spike Lee Quotes

it's difficult in Hollywood to be allowed to try anything. It's all a terrible compromise. There is no time for art. All that matters is what they call box office.

I think it's a shame when the arts have to suffer because of corporate greed. People will always strive to make film, and the only important thing is that we keep trying to make ourselves heard and keep making our films, no matter what the climate is.

I see myself and many artists like me as the torchbearers through these dark ages.

I am proud being an artist who takes risks, who would walk off a cliff artistically. I won't settle for commercial reasons.

You have to do what you need to do as an artist. You have to have that courage.

My faith in my filmmaking changed on the heels of 'Titan.' It allowed me to pursue things that I previously would have questioned.

I've never really thought of myself as just an actor; I always thought of myself as aspiring to be an artist, and an artist has to take risks and put himself on the line.

I am glad that we can make bold films, different films within the commercial market and still do well.

The reach of big-budget films is bigger, but I have always loved doing films that I believe in.

I'm not afraid of a big studio film; I trust my instincts. But for me, it's not really about box office. It's about looking back on your work and not having to apologize for it.

They can't yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him.

There's no such thing beneath the heavens as conditions favorable to art. Art must crash through or perish.

As an artist, you don't stop making art because people are not buying it.

Precocious and eccentric are okay. But I think that people in the arts represent something integral and kind of secretive in everybody else. So the reason people like some artists is because they're saying or doing something that they would like to do or say, but they don't have the balls or the means. People are really afraid to put their ass on the line. Just to put your face on a poster and put your name in big print and say "Come see me," that takes some cojones, you know? Ambition is nothing to be ashamed of.

A great artist has to be ready to fail.

You cannot play for safety and make art.

I don't want to move over to Beverly Hills. My goal is to make the movies I want to make and support the people I want to support. That's it.

God does not ask for 'religious' art or 'Catholic' art. The art he wants for himself is Art, with all its teeth

Critics are more committed to the rules of art than artists are.

One of the things I'm most proud of about myself is my ability to fail in front of the world. You have to have that attitude when you want to experiment in art, in music, in writing, or in fashion.

How can you go out on a limb if you do not know your own tree? No art ever came out of not risking your neck. And risk--experiment--is a considerable part of the joy of doing.

To be sure, a good work of art can and will have moral consequences, but to demand of the artists moral intentions, means ruiningtheir craft.

In art there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists

You’re getting rid of the things that people used to think were essential to art. But that reduction is only incidental. I object to the whole reduction idea…if my work is reductionist it’s because it doesn’t have the elements that people thought should be there. But it has other elements I like.

When you're on a lower-budget film, with one guy who maybe has a camera strapped to him, you're a much bigger part of that pie. You can be a sliver in a big Hollywood movie, but you can be a quarter of that indie movie pie. And I feel like, first of all, there is a real freedom that you feel from that, because it's like, you know what, if this is terrible, nobody's gonna ever see it, so I can be more brave.