Jason Robert Brown Quotes

I began to wonder - I knew I was an artist or wanted to be one - but I was wondering whether I really was an artist. I was doing such ordinary things that I could feel the difference. Most people would look at those things and say, 'Well, that's nothing. What did you do that for? That's just a wreck of a car or a wreck of a man. That's nothing. That isn't art.' They don't say that anymore.

I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.

I think I'm needed - as an artist, as an individual, as an entity, an enigma, an exhibitionist, an entertainer - as an alternative.

I am happy for people to talk about my pictures, but I wish devoutly that I was not expected to talk about them myself.

Art is Art. Everything else is everything else.

U2 is an original species... there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.

This is my life - I want to tell stories. There is something huge inside me that pushes me to tell stories, and tell stories for an audience and everybody.

I just consider myself an artist. I don't really rap. I don't really sing. I just do what I feel is good, and people like it.

I've been making music for a long time, but I've been waiting to do it right, because I don't want people to think it's just a stepping stone in my career. A lot of actors go that route as a way of building their careers. I don't want it to be seen as that.

It's just I do things differently and I want people to appreciate music for what it is, and not because of a story.

My style just is what it is and it's pretty obvious what it is. People seem to like it.

My friends tell me that I am an intruder, that I don't really write when I attempt poetry. But those of my friends who write in prose say that I'm no writer when I attempt prose. So really I don't know what to do, I'm in a quandary.

The blank space can be humbling. But I've faced it my whole professional life. It's my job. It's also my calling. Bottom line: Filling this empty space constitutes my identity.

My art is rooted in a single reflection: why am I not as others are? ... my art gives meaning to my life.

I wasn't sure I was an artist, so I thought maybe I just was throwing ideas out for people to consider.

I've always defined myself as a writer, I've never decided what it was I was gonna write. [...] I always fancied myself one, but I'm not. I'm so far from a writer.

I think it's bad for human beings to be artists. It's awful. You want to do something but you're constantly trying to decide what you want to do. Let's just say it's no place like Hawaii.

The life of the artist should be distinguished from that of all other people, even in external habits. They are Brahmins, a higher caste, not ennobled by birth, however, but through deliberate self-initiation.

I believe that if you're an artist, it's like a gift. If you can do this for a living and you can be involved in it, it's something that you can't ignore. It's the chance for you to have a voice and create something from yourself.

When it comes to words I have a uniqueness that I find almost impossible in art – and it's my words that actually make my art quite unique.

I started having doubts right on top of my certainty.

I do feel like a fraud a lot of the time because I've never been interested in people who say 'I'm a writer', 'I'm an artist'. Too much is made of the role and not enough of the work. We are such a celebrity-driven age and a status-driven age, that the status becomes more important than the actual work.

Better to think of writing, of what one does, as an activity, rather than an identity to keep the calling a verb rather than a noun.

I don't think I'm good, I don't think I'm a good rapper. I think a lot of people always want me to battle somebody and stuff like that which is cool, but I don't see myself as a rapper.

As much as there is joy in writing, there's always the little bit of terror to keep you on edge, on your toes. It is a strange way to occupy yourself - to enjoy your life on a daily basis. There is no guarantee that something great is going to come next.