Kacey Musgraves Quotes

I'm an artist, and an artist doesn't worry about being politically correct when I write.

It's become my brand in a way, you know, speaking the truth even though it was not politically correct.

I don't censor myself, but I don't want to force my sick-skewed version of the world, either.

I always tell students that writing a poem and publishing it are two quite separate things, and you should write what you have to write, and if you're afraid it's going to upset someone, don't publish it.

All artists are now free to express their own personality.

There have been times when I'm writing about things that are personally embarrassing. Like any human being, sometimes I can't help but wonder - 'What are the people I know going to think about this?' So I have to remind myself that all is permissible. Art has to be a free space. Language has to be a free space.

Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to create literary art, and you decide to hold back, to censor yourself, then you are a fool to yourself and it would be better that you kept your mouth shut and did not speak.

But at this phase of my life, I want to write and not have to think about whether a song is going to be a hit. I want to explore the music that inspires me, and I don't want to ape myself.

I think when you're in my position as an artist, I can say what I want and talk about the issues that matter.

If I'm inspired to make a certain kind of song, I'm going to make that kind of song, no matter if it's what they know me as or think I am.

I can't be interesting, controversial, and the writer I'd like to be if I need everybody to like me and think I'm doing the right thing, because those two things, in my experience, never go hand in hand.

You've got to be in a place where you can put your guard down. I've got a long list of things I consider to be selling out. But amongst that list, one of them is when you make art without putting your guard down.

When I look at comedy, it's all self-expression. I apply that same method to my music. I came up listening to N.W.A and Snoop. Like them, it's in me to express how I feel. You might like it or you might not, but I take that stand.

What is one man's hate speech is another man's poetry.

I'm not a lawyer, but I do know this: we need to protect our ability to tell controversial stories.

I've never thought of it consciously... I say exactly what I think, and very often it's totally politically incorrect. I get, always, chastised for it. So it's not shtick. But I think I'm the one who says, 'The emperor has no clothes.'

I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.

When you find a song that you love, you just have to do it - why would I try to match it? When I wrote more of the songs in the '90s - 'Nick of Time' and other songs I was surprised I came up with - it was because nobody else was saying what I wanted to say.

Sometimes I feel like I'm taking on a role when I'm writing a song, and it doesn't always have to be true. I'm not sitting in my room crying with my guitar, writing a slow solo about a depressing breakup; that's not me.

I'm not a politician, I'm not an ideologue, I'm not an organizer anymore. I'm a human being sharing ideas, and those ideas have to feel fresh and from my heart and my head, and I have to feel it. You can't force that feeling.

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.

I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.

To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel - not the way others think you should feel.

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.

I don't like being put in a box. I just make music, you know?