David LaChapelle Quotes

Freelancers are 'free' because they take risks - they don't like being told what to do. That's both exciting and daunting, because you have to police you.

I think, like any artist or any writer, I just want to have that pure freedom of expression and of thought - the freedom to explore and move in unexpected ways.

I only can talk about myself and my experience. Honestly, working on your own terms is difficult for a newcomer but not impossible. I am an example of that.

I think - for female or male, it is very challenging on the independent scene.

Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow - whether there is a market for it or not! The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don't show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward.

I think that limitations are the most important part of any art form

I saw myself traveling with a company or making my own work and being a little weird. I wasn't thinking about the business side of anything, I just knew that I loved dancing.

Sometimes I have good ideas. I love that part of our job. It's a constant process of searching, of exploring stuff, and realizing things. You can be in the middle of the film and it's like, "Oh my God! I think we need to do this! Maybe in this scene she should shave her head!"

I just make what I'm making, and then one day I won't want to make it anymore. I think that's a luxury we should be able to have as people, especially as artists.

A lot of it's experimental, spontaneous. It's about knocking about in the studio and bumping into things.

I don't think you should sit around and wait for people to give you an opportunity to express yourself or do your work, or whatever. Actors have to be producers and writers have to be producers.

When you write a novel or paint a picture, you have the opportunity to approach it and back off, tear up pages, write, rewrite, paint over, and come back to it. In film, once you start shooting, you can't restart the clock, and you keep moving forward, and you don't look back, and you don't go back. And that is, of course, antithetical to the creative process. It's really hard to generate a comfortable creative flow under that kind of pressure.

I do think that's one of the reasons that acting appealed to me so much: the idea of letting go of control in a controlled environment. Being able to go through the range of intense emotions and jump off the cliff, metaphorically, but in a creative way, and in a way where the structure was really solid.

My working life is me doing what I want to do. This is that. I've made movies that people don't go to see.

This is one of my big things of creative pursuits. You have your idea you want to do, but then you got to figure out what does this thing want to be? You got to let it lead you a little.

Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others. Photography is still a very new medium and everything is allowed and everything should be tried and dared... Photography has no rules. It is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it was achieved.

When I left the Beatles, I made an album called McCartney that I played everything on. And it was kind of a cool experience. I felt like a professor in a laboratory, just crafting stuff and adding this, and putting this on and moving the microphone, and it was very homemade.

I think it's possible to allow an artist to go beyond his borders and play.

I am in a space now where I can try anything; and with Pink Floyd we've always been in a space where we were able to try out anything. I think we were very young then and we were very keen to experiment and try things out. It seems to me that this sort of experimenting is like working yourself towards something and trying to find what you like and what you want.

I still see myself as a bit of a cottage industry. Being in a room creating stuff and seeing if anyone wants it, as opposed to going to work for someone.

I really created my career out of my own compulsion. Because I knew if I owned an exercise studio and I had to teach my classes there, I wasn't going to gain my weight back.

Each time I sit down and write a play I try to dismiss from my mind as much as I possibly can the implications of what I've done before, what I'm going to do, what other people think about my work, the failure or success of the previous play. I'm stuck with a new reality that I've got to create.

I prefer a much looser style. Any time a writer thinks he has all the answers to how someone should talk or react or end a scene, it's a spontaneity - killer. I don't get making sure you get every word right in some stupid speech just because a writer sat there and did it.

You know when I think about what I'm doing - what I'm doing and the way I'm doing it is more important to me than any amount of money or anything like that because it's my artistic work.

I think the hallmark of a really good entrepreneur is that you're not really going to build one specific company. The goal - at least the way I think about entrepreneurship - is you realize one day that you can't really work for anyone else. You have to start your own thing. It almost doesn't matter what that thing is.