Jerrod Carmichael Quotes

I have to speak for myself. As far as videos go - casting, the artwork, everything - I'm completely hands-on. You have to be if you want your points across.

It's not so much that I want to direct but that I have to. When I write something it terrifies me that if I give it to someone else and it doesn't turn out as it could have done, I'd feel as if I'd orphaned my baby.

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'm certainly not who people think I am. I always do whatever I want to do, and my films are personal to me.

Through art, you create your own world.

You gotta make the movie you want to make.

I feel I'm all over my movies. I know my movies are all over me.

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.

I used to get in trouble with my old agent, because I've never been driven by fear or need or greed. I want my work to represent me as a person, so I can be quite fussy.

I need to find a way of retaining creative control.

I'm very hands-on with my own music.

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.

When I want to put out an album, I want to write it. I want to be able to say that I wrote my album, and all this stuff is from me.

I worked with some directors, and it was really collaborative, and I was sort of writing with them. I was giving so many pieces of myself to their movies, I thought, 'It's about time I use my own voice for me, and establish my own voice.' So I knew I wanted to make films.

You're supposed to be a control freak when you're an artist. That's the whole point of having a vision: Why have one if you're not going to protect it?

If you write, produce and direct, you own things and see them through to the end.

My life is as an artist, not an entertainer. I don't consider myself an entertainer, but I can do that thing when I want to.

When I'm making a song that's very Grimes, it just feels very insular and it feels weird to have someone else do something on it.

The artist is not responsible to any one. His social role is asocial... his only responsibility consists in an attitude to the work he does.

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

When I get to do whatever I want, I'm perfectly happy. I've found that the best scenario is that I just do what I do, and if somebody wants to be part of it, they should work as a conduit for what vision I have. They should help me complete the universe.

I could make a whole album with no one else involved at all. It would be a total, unadulterated expression of myself. Because whenever you have others playing on a project, their influence becomes a part of it.

We are going to finish this picture just the way I want it... because you cannot compromise an artist's vision.

I design all of my costumes. I like to go out there and feel like I have contributed to every part of what I do. I choose the music, the choreographer, I've obviously chosen my coach, my costumes - all if that falls under my realm of power, my realm of influence.

I'm doing the kind of show that I would want to see.