Suzy Kassem Quotes

I'm selfish, I think. I think an artist has to be. I'm not worried about what people think. I play the parts that I find interesting. It'd bother me more to be just pigeonholed into doing what people think is ethical or that's boring to me. I don't pick parts with that in mind, I just find interesting stories. If it's interesting to me, then I do it.

Somebody once told me I shouldn't try to change Hollywood. That isn't my point at all. I don't want Hollywood to change me.

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.

We only do what we think is good and what we're happy with. I do that in stand-up, I even do it with my children's books. I don't do market research, I don't have focus groups, I don't care. I don't care if it fails, honestly. I'd rather have something that's completely mine fail than something succeed that I'm not proud of.

It's really tough to make a name for yourself without compromising and without fitting yourself into a real specific mold. When I made the choice that I would be involved in every aspect of music and not necessarily make music for radio or MTV, I was saying, 'OK, this is me. You decide who it is.'

I had to learn to do stuff only for myself, and stop thinking about pleasing some imaginary client or boss. It's a habit that many artists get into that have worked in commercial ventures.

I want to be really special, I want to be really good. It's not enough to be famous for me. Famous is empty so quickly, it's not what people think it is. It's wonderful, but if you're famous and you feel that you're an artist inside and everyone thinks you're just a celebrity, it's really painful.

I'm older now, and I been through that, like, 'Stop. Tell the truth, what I need to do?' And I think that's important, as far as artist, for me to stand for what I believe in, And a lot of times people don't like that, you know what I'm saying. You become a troubled artist, or, 'You don't listen,' but as long as I say 'Yeah, I'll do it!' I'm a good person.

There’s nothing more embarrassing than a person who tries to guess what the great American public would like, makes a compromise for the first time, and falls flat on his face… I would rather be a failure on my own terms than a success on someone else’s. That’s a difficult statement to live up to, but then I’ve always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there.

I want to pave my own path artistically.

I want to be remembered as somebody that tried to respect her integrity as an artist and as a person. And I don't want to be in any box. I don't want to be one thing.

I have always tried to work according to what affects me, to a script that I like because it touches me in some way, without deliberately pursuing a commercial career or a particular image.

I've never been one to sit back and go, 'I'd better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don't want to lose them.'

Living creatively is really important to maintain throughout your life. And living creatively doesn't mean only artistic creativity, although that's part of it. It means being yourself, not just complying with the wishes of other people.

What guides me is to do work that's more avant-garde - things that I think are special. You can easily become a celebrity and get caught up in all that blur. I just want to work and surprise myself.

I refuse to be molded into some stereotypical ballplayer that has no interests, really, no life, no depth, no intelligence.

I want to show that we all have the right to be ourselves, and I certainly don't want to freeze time.

When I was younger, all I cared about was what people thought of me and my films. Now I care less about catering, hand-serving, hand-feeding the audience. I've gotten to the point now in my life where I'm serving myself.

I've decided to do what I want to do in life and follow my own path as an artist, so I've decided not to participate in any sort of nostalgia in which I'm marginalized as a pop icon of yesteryear.

I can't think of anything worse, really, than to try to live up to someone else's expectations of what you should be. You don't make art by consensus.

I never wanted to be a feature - that was never the goal with my music. I didn't want to just live through other people's work.

I've always rooted on kids that do what they want to do and are being who they want to be.

For me, university was a bit of a rebellious streak. I love teachers but I'm inherently a bit of an anarchist and don't trust you because you're my teacher. Somewhere around my second or third year, I realized as an artist that it's up to us to choose our path, and there's nothing wrong with being given many different tools to put in your tool bag.

I don't do any art to please any people.

I've tried not to get too bogged down by what people want you to be.