Chuck D Quotes

Publicity gets more than a little tiring. You want it, you need it, you crave it, and you're scared as hell when it stops.

We're all given a window of opportunity, I think all artists are, of any genre. A window when you're truly relevant, the spotlight's on you and people are watching what you do.

I think another way that you can really harm yourself as an artist is by buying into the mythology that it's really important.

I feel like it's not about the music anymore-it's about how many friends you have on Facebook and your Instagram pictures. I hate that. It's such bad publicity for music and for true artists, and I'll try to fight as hard as I can to not be like that.

When the news is slow, or when there's just so many other responsibilities bearing down on me that I don't have the time to do it right, that's when it gets frustrating. As an artist, you just don't wanna put bad work out. So when you have to do it seven days a week, you're just gonna have some bad days and bad weeks and bad months and bad years.

I do not enjoy the promotional side of being a writer, to be blunt about it. Even with the little amount that is expected of me, which is nothing compared to the life of an artist. Writers can live in obscurity and come out of the woodwork with a book, then go back in. Artists don’t have that luxury.

You forget why you're fighting - you can lose sight of why you're doing it all.

There's nothing more tragic than artists from the 70s still doing art from the 70s.

Every writer has to make an emotional journey from artist sitting in attic to being part of a business. The writer of a film is like Tinkerbell. You are only there because people believe in you. The moment they dont, because youre a pain the arse, youve lost.

This perversion of the truth, familiar to the artist though it was, always unnerved him afresh and proved too much for him. What was a consequence of the premature ending of his fast was here presented as the cause of it! To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of nonunderstanding, was impossible.

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy.

Every artist, true artist, struggles with an overwhelming sense of feeling like you're not worthy.

I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly in need of reassurance, and yet with a stubborn streak of faith in their own validity no matter what.

There's only one passion in most artists more violent than their desire for admiration: their fear of identifying the nature of such admiration as they do receive.

Even the president is watching the fight.

To express himself well, the artist should be hidden. The trouble is that if an artist knows he has genius, he's done for. The only salvation is to work like a labourer, and not have delusions of grandeur.

I was angry. I was kind of looking for a fight. I didn't want to talk to you guys in the press, because initially, understandably, all they wanted to talk to me about was, you know, what does it feel like?

Because when an artist has to assert that her intended audience is all humans rather than those who happen to be of her particular gender or race, what she’s actually having to assert is the breadth and depth of her own humanity.

I think that music is stale because of it. I think that we have the same artists from day to day. It's nice to see an artist dip out and come back in every once in awhile. There's a such thing as oversaturating the market. I mean look at Britney.

You're making these movies for pennies, there's absolutely nothing to offer anybody, and they will still fight you! "There's no more back-end for him? Well he'll have your back-end! He'll take your first born child!" Producing is totally exhausting.

Every artist, every scientist, every writer must decide now where he stands. The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative.

You really can't function as a celebrity. Entertainers are celebrities. I'm an architect. I'm an artist. I make things.

It's a shock for me to go through and see all those years of painting my life, which is very personal for me. It's a very difficult thing for an artist to look back at his work.

Being a public figure was reserved for movie stars.

Being an artist and having a following can be a very scary thing because idolization makes you question your inner role in the universe. A lot of people get caught up in this idea of, "Wow! This world does revolve around me," and it most certainly does not. It's the exact opposite; these people don't exist for you, you exist for them.