Rodney Crowell Quotes

It does not in the least concern me whether I shall have at the end of my life thirty people who understand or three hundred. I am like an artist who paints a picture because he must, otherwise he is unhappy - not unhappy, but he must obey that creative impulse.

The real artist while he paints does not think of the sale, only of the need to make a beautiful living thing.

One of the things I love about doing things that are creative is that I feel like it's my right as an artist not to be affected by the reactions of those people that are going to hear my songs.

I am proud being an artist who takes risks, who would walk off a cliff artistically. I won't settle for commercial reasons.

I just wanted to be an artist. I didn't care how or what; I just wanted to express my artistic integrity, and I wanted the world to have a vision of what I was seeing in my mind.

If you're a painter, you don't go, 'Abstract's really selling, so that's what I'm going to do.' If you're really truly an artist, you have to think what you're meant to paint.

An artiste can only be happy when he is true to his art.

As an artist, you have to do what you feel passionate about. It has to be something you can connect with.

The market kills more artistic passion than anything else.

It's true that the human body is more vulnerable than the products of the human mind. We need to protect artists and journalists people to allow them to work.

A lot of people are like, "How are you going to re-do it?" I'm not worried about what people are going to say because you know people are gonna be like, "It doesn't sound like this... It sounds like this." I'm just going to make music that I know I'm supposed to make.

For the serious artist does not satisfy needs

Most people are afraid to trust their imaginations and the artist is not.

I don't believe in censorship, but I do believe that an artist has to take some moral responsibility for what he or she is putting out there.

I think it's harder to make a classic now, not because of what people say, but because artists now are so concerned with what people say.

The artist's duty to himself is a combination of immense responsibility and immense irresponsibility. I think those two interlock.

There is a desperate tendency to try to legislate artists, to try to lay down rules for their obligations to society. Just leave artists alone. If you are a true artist, you will have a very finely tuned moral mechanism.

With an artist no sane man quarrels, any more than with the colour of a child's eyes.

As an artist, you don't stop making art because people are not buying it.

To be an artist is a blessing and a privilege. Artists must never betray their true hearts. Artists must look beneath the surface and show that there is more to this world than what meets the eye.

Hollywood people don't want to be embarrassed by being involved with someone who isn't happening and cool at the time. But I never made the movies for the critics; I've done the best I could with the material and the directors and the actors I had. But the thing that's really exciting is that once I do that one project that's different, that stands out, everyone's gonna be watching.

I just go in the studio and do what I love to do. People will be people, they'll come and go, they'll like you then not like you, I just try to stay true to myself first and that's what most important because that way when you are successful you can stand up and say look, I did it my way and I did it the way that I wanted to do it.

I figure as an artist the best thing you can do is follow your heart - and if your heart is marketable, then you win.

An artist is completely amoral in that he will rob, beg, borrow, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

I hope I will always have the ability to create art and live in a world where I can speak freely, and I can inspire people. I don't know what form that will take.