Britt Daniel Quotes

Art should never try to be popular.

That's the artist's role - to strike out always for something new, to break away, to defy, to... grapple with the unfamiliar.

There’s nothing more embarrassing than a person who tries to guess what the great American public would like, makes a compromise for the first time, and falls flat on his face… I would rather be a failure on my own terms than a success on someone else’s. That’s a difficult statement to live up to, but then I’ve always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there.

A true artist is always out of his time.

I like to make the music that I really love. You're supposed to make your favorite music that no one else played, and I'd like to just keep it at that and not really change it at all.

I don't want ever to be guilty of what my critics claim: doing formula without original elements.

If you start to just aim for what the audience wants to hear, you're already hamstrung because you don't have any freedom.

Just trying to be different - when I hear something - I don't like to go trampling on other people's sounds.

I've realised that if I aim for a successful record, I probably won't have any success. But if I keep making weird things, then hopefully the audiences will come to us.

What guides me is to do work that's more avant-garde - things that I think are special. You can easily become a celebrity and get caught up in all that blur. I just want to work and surprise myself.

You hear ten seconds of a song, and you know it's OutKast. There's a strangeness about it because it's catchy, but it's not just pop for the sake of pop. They're pushing the envelope.

In my short career, I tend not to repeat myself. I have no interest in redoing something. Sometimes that makes people angry, and maybe it's not the best thing for me commercially. But it's the best thing for me artistically, and it's the best thing for my heart.

I would much rather see somebody bring something new to a genre than produce something that seems safe.

Please don't try to make things nice! All the wrong notes are right. Just copy as I have -- I want it that way.

The secret is to remain true to your aesthetic vision, so that people can see that you really believe passionately in what you are doing. That way, they can relate to your style. At the same time, you experiment-you try new things.

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

Imitation always stinks. When I take photos, I don't go back. I don't look at the past. I'm always original.

If you never look just wrong to your contemporaries you will never look just right to posterity - every writer has to try to be, to some extent, sometimes, a law unto himself.

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

Bryan [Cranston] created something completely unique, that was earned by its authenticity. That's what gave us the license to push it a bit.

An artist discovers his genius the day he dares not to please.

I have never written out of a desire to be controversial.

Being essentially a creator, I never set out to shock, always thinking about creating my work and not about the benefits it could produce.

I feel that if you made your writing too contrived to meet the market, it wouldn't be any good.

Show me a Scorsese film, and I'll show you a movie where he's taken risks. It's just his nature. He's an artist, and artists take risks. He always does what he believes in.