Pete Seeger Quotes

If I don't have to think about the commercial aspect of it, then I feel like I'm going to make better films.

The market kills more artistic passion than anything else.

Then little writings and recordings that thankfully continue to come up. I'm in this kind of wonderful, kind of awkward, off-putting, and strange position where there's nothing I want to do more than continue to make music, but the ways that I do things are not in tune with how I can do them commercially.

I don't think I'd be able to flat-out write a pop song and make it satisfying to me. I'm ready to make a consistent sound in whatever way I can.

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden. It is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.

I've found through experience that I'm only good when I'm writing something that, in essence, only I could write. The times I've written for hire, for other people, I don't think I've done very well.

You know when I think about what I'm doing - what I'm doing and the way I'm doing it is more important to me than any amount of money or anything like that because it's my artistic work.

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."

I think being an activist and an artist is an interesting contradiction, because so often they are at odds with one another. When you write as an artist you have to clean the palate of your own politics in creating characters and activism is kind of the exact opposite.

I wish that I could write. I think that's a wonderful outlet for an artist. You are ultimately in control. Your fate is not determined by outside influences. You can write wherever you are. I don't think I have the talent.

I realized in the early days I just didn't edit at all. But I think you become a little more cagey with your lyrics when you know more people are going to hear them and make assumptions about you as a person. Realizing that, you want to be a little more opaque.

I want to make music that I like; not something that I have to make because I think it's going to sell.

My goal was never to sell many records.

I'm not looking to be an artist to make money. I'm looking to be an artist.

The only reason why you should do a film is because it creatively carbonates you and gets you going. If you're doing it for any other reason, you've lost sight of why you're acting in the first place.

I don't believe that artists really are interested in money. That's not the motivation for art.

When you are older, you realise that everything else is just nothing compared to painting and drawing.

It is the glory and good of Art, That Art remains the one way possible Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine at least.

What is the art world? I never really understood. I started doing this stuff to do what I want to do. Not to be this or that.

I was literally told for 'The Show Goes On' that I shouldn't rap too deep. I shouldn't be too lyrical. It just needs to be something easy on the eyes. Like a record company telling Picasso that we don't need these abstract interpretations of life, where people have to sit down and look at it and break it down.

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 have to be able to be the artist that I am.

One does not devote one's life in art to shock an audience.

Many musicians will say they don't care about the money yet they must commit themselves to appear at given times and places, and to produce what sells, whether they believe in it or not. It depends on contracts.

I'd love more production houses to encourage artists to create what they want and not just churn things out.