Louise Erdrich Quotes

I think the key for any kind of artist - and this transcends music - is a certain degree of authenticity and sincerity.

As long as I don't have to compromise my art, that's the most important thing. It doesn't matter if I'm famous or not, it's all about the music.

You can write anything you want to,--a six-act blank verse, symbolic tragedy or a vulgar short, short story. Just so that you write it with honesty and gusto, and do not try to make somebody believe that you are smarter than you are. What's the use? You can never be smarter than you are.

Write what you love and love what you write.

Everybody's out trying to be commercial. I'm not trying to be anything, really.

Art is a concrete and personal and rather childish thing after all - no matter what people do to graft it into science and make it sociological and psychological; it is no good at all unless it is let alone to be itself - a game of make-believe, or re-production, very exciting and delightful to people who have an ear for it or an eye for it.

The poetry and the songs that you are suppose to write, I believe are in your heart. You just have to open up your heart and not be afraid to get them out.

It's exciting to watch people do and write and say what they feel like doing, writing and saying.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

What's the point if you make something that's not you, and you're successful? You have to perform it the rest of your life.

Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art.

I want that every piece of art be honest, never mind what it is about.

I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you - it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.

Legacy above finances; artistry above fame.

The best strips are the most honest. That's just the truth of it.

The sincerity of the art worker must permeate the song as naturally as the green leaves break through the dead branches in springtime.

Art is more engaging that propaganda.

That isn't writing at all, it's typing.

I always felt that if I was going to do a movie, I wanted it to be authentic.

I don't write anything that I haven't lived. In terms of integrity, you have to write what you live. And if you write beyond what you live, it is theory. And theory is not helpful. It is just not.

An artist should remain true. Otherwise his talent, like his stomach, grows fat and stuffy.

If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.

I'm a writer. My job is to speak what - that which I think is true. If that bridges the gap, that's good. If it doesn't, that's too bad.

I've always been an artist who's about being real and about telling the truth and making music with integrity and talking about something.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man's soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.