Vijay Sethupathi Quotes

It's dangerous to think too much about how a film will be received. Filmmaking is not a popularity contest. Some would disagree.

I'm American. I'm eclectic. I'm going to follow my musical passions. And if people don't like it, and it hurts my legacy, I'm not going to worry about that.

I am proud being an artist who takes risks, who would walk off a cliff artistically. I won't settle for commercial reasons.

I don't want to be known as someone who is deliberately trying to do things that are not commercial! That is not a good reputation to have when you're trying to be a working actor.

When I met Ram Charan, he told me not to worry about how much my films make. After 'Magadheera,' people began expecting big things from him. So he did films to keep up to that expectation. He advised me to not fall into that trap.

I don't think about how much business my films will make.

Box office success has never meant anything. I couldn't get a film made if I paid for it myself. So I'm not 'box office' and never have been, and that's never entered into my kind of mind set.

I believe that a creative career is only as good as the risks that you take with it.

Sarah Vaughan is one of my greatest heroes. She personifies what an artist is all about, taking risks, daring to go beyond the boundaries of safety and convention. It takes courage to share your vulnerability.

I've never played it safe on my own music.

I'm an artist, and I like the risk - I'm not in it for the sure things.

So it's hard to be an artist and be true to the reality of the world you want to create and also make it entertaining and successful financially.

Get that right, then- if you get the quality right, then the marketability or whatever; your ability to sell videos or your ability to earn money or whatever, will follow naturally. But try to be creatively lead rather than market lead. And that's important to me.

I do know one thing: I wish people were doing more dangerous musicals, more courageous musicals and not just falling into the trap of trying to figure out what the public wants, because you find out that the public very often wants what's good.

You have to do what you need to do as an artist. You have to have that courage.

I have worried about getting pigeon-holed, but now I think I've done enough weird, offbeat stuff not to be. And I also know that I do things for the right reasons: I've made my money, so I don't have to say yes to anything.

I'm always looking for something that's real and that's got meat on it. I think it's artistic suicide if you're too vain, or if you're afraid to play ugly. I would never fall for that.

I have cut four albums so far, and all of them have been trendsetters and commercially successful. I believe that once you start taking art in commercial terms, it ceases to be art.

An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.

I'd rather have a hundred thousand or a million people saying I'm nuts and I'm crazy for my musical choices and what I've said lyrically, than a million people all raising their hand on the first day.

I always wanted to be really experimental.

Art should walk a tightrope. That's what art should be. Art should be dangerous. You can't be scared to say something with it. People love to talk about how comics are real art and real literature, so why not use these characters to talk about real things, even if it is dangerous?

What is good for you creatively is usually bad commercially. You thrive financially by sticking to a series and not fiddling about too much. You do yourself harm by moving away from the series and the genre. By trying things not based in that particular mode of writing, you will just lose readers.

You can think what you like of Madonna - about her political choices and her PR - but you have to respect her courage not to let the critics stop her exploring her potential.

If I didn't start singing in the cabarets and on my albums, I could have never even tried something like 'Capone.'