Jonas Mekas Quotes

I think, as an artist, I wear a lot of different hats, and people have to join all of the dots.

When I've seen my operas in Europe, they have always struck me as more American than when I hear them here. I can't tell you what that phenomenon is.

When I land in a country and they ask for 'occupation,' I always just put 'artist.' I think that covers all of it.

I do notice that when I come in to meet casting people, they love that I'm Australian. Maybe it's our good work ethic.

I want to deal with somebody who comes from another country to the United States and has a family that comes. I don't care if it's a black family from Jamaica or a Hispanic family from Mexico. These issues need to be dealt with, but they need to be dealt with in the entertaining way.

I think it's really important for actors to have another creative outlet, or for anyone, really.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

National film industries tend to move in cycles. In Australia right now, we're on a high, a feeling of potential, which as yet shows no sign of flagging. But the word 'industry' is misleading. A small national cinema has no industry in the Hollywood sense.

I don't really have that much contact with Americans. I mean, I see the oddest things on the Internet, I suppose. And I've got a couple of American friends, but they are Anglophiles anyway because they've decided to come live here.

French-Canadians have no need to be afraid of the English ... instead, let us admire their energy and perseverance; let us imitate them. To be excellent French-Canadians we need to have, along with the qualities of our race, the best qualities of the English-Canadians.

With regards to music, I don't want to pigeonhole myself and say I am a musician or a visual artist, because I feel like it's all-encompassing, and I feel like every bit of my art is related to the other.

When I was growing up, I felt like I had to qualify it and say I'm British-Pakistani. But now I kind of feel like, in this day in age, this is what British looks like. It looks like me; it looks like Idris Elba, and hopefully through Nasir Khan, people will see that that's what an American can look like as well.

Not to compare an actor to a painter, but you can go through different phases and still be the same artist, y'know?

A lot of people don't know that before the artist, I wanted to be a writer and producer. That's always been a love of mine. Its easy for me to do it on myself, but it's fun to create for someone else.

My artistic manifesto exists in the world as poetry. So even though most of the things that I've done have been on other people's projects or could be pigeonholed in certain ways, that's not how I perceive myself.

It's difficult to identify why two cultures will react differently to the same sport.

I think it's really important, as an actor in this business, to have another creative outlet.

Writing is very much perceived as something distinct from performance. I don't see it like that.

I consider myself more a European director who is from Iceland than an Icelandic director.

There's blackballing involved with Machine Gun Kelly, a lot of confusion about who I am as an artist. But that's so small in the wake of someone like Nelson Mandela.

I'm a poet, first and foremost as a writer. That's who I am. That's what I'm most comfortable writing.

Once I had gone for a shoot at a remote Fiji island in the middle of Pacific Ocean and I was thoroughly bowled over the popularity of this character there! I've also got positive feedback from U.K., U.S.A., Canada, Pakistan and Dubai for my performance as Brahmanad.

It would be ridiculous for anyone to consider me the face of Korean art.

In any event, I'm proud to wear the badge of jazz vocalist if that's what people want to call me; but at the same time, there are many other things I like to do.

In 'National Geographic,' you always saw pictures of tribal Africa. And here I am, sitting in Nairobi in our suburban house, watching TV and thinking, 'Why is it always going to be these tribal people 'that are the ambassadors of our image?