Dan Colen Quotes

I believed in myself, and I've always worked very, very hard as an artist, and I am an artist in every sense of the word.

If you only believe that you're an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that's quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

If it is the mark of the artist to love art before everything, to renounce everything for its sake, to think all the sweet human things of life well lost if only he may attain something, do some good, great work - then I was never an artist.

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.

Have faith in your own thoughts.

Other filmmakers make their movies and put them out and that's that. For me, for some odd reason, it goes deeper than that.

I was always confident in my art and in myself as an artist.

We've always believed in our music.

As a filmmaker what you can hope to do is doing what drives you.

The true artist plays mad with his soul, labors at the very lip of the volcano, but remembers and clings to his purpose, which is as strong as the dream. He is not someone possessed, like Cassandra, but a passionate, easily tempted explorer who fully intends to get home again, like Odysseus.

When I did the album Electric Circus, not only was it not commercially received. But even the critics and hip-hop community was like "What is this?" At that moment, I could've been written off. But I had to believe because I really love what I do. I'm passionate about it. If 12 million recognize it, that's beautiful. If 12,000 do, that's beautiful. But I'm always going to put my heart and soul in it and I'm going to shoot for the stars and go for the highest levels of recognition and creativity. I definitely doubted myself at the time. But it always come back to believing what I do.

A man's own self is the last person to believe in him, and is harder to cheat than the rest of the world.

Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.

Writing is too hard not to do exactly what you want to do. It's a very draining and agonizing process for me, and I don't want to live with any piece of work that I don't believe in completely. I have to believe completely in what I'm doing. It has grown organically out of my own experience.

Magic comes from what is inside you. It is a part of you. You can't weave together a spell that you don't beleive in.

A writer, or any artist, can’t expect to be embraced by the people [but] you just keep doing your work - because you have to, because it’s your calling.

You've got to just follow your heart and do your best work. For better or worse, I have followed my heart. There is no doubt in my mind or heart that everything I've done is exactly what I intended to do.

Know and believe in yourself and what others think won't disturb you.

I have a great amount of confidence and faith in my abilities to write. There are other areas of my life where I'm not as confident, and have not as much faith, but when it comes down to writing and working, I don't worry about it. I trust myself to get it right.

At a certain level, great actors who are successful actors don't have to worry about it. They can just go for it because they believe in themselves.

To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.

The first step before anybody else in the world believes it, is that you believe it.

If you don't believe in yourself nobody else will believe in you.

I know what I can do, so I never doubt myself.

Some people call it fearless, some people call it confidence. And I feel I'm confident of whatever I do.