John Cusack Quotes

My art and my creativities were totally something that was of my own heart and mind. I could never let anybody dictate to me what I should write and how I would write it.

The freedom of every artist is essential.

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.

I've had a lot of voices tell me what I should be making. Personally, I would much rather live and die by my own hand. If my stuff sucks, then at least I made it suck. I didn't allow some person, some old dude in a suit, to make it suck for me.

I always felt like an outsider of the industry, and now I feel quite comfortable as an independent artist.

There's nobody like The B-52s. But doing stuff on my own, I can also express more personal songs.

Very few artists are as independent as I am mentally, physically, spiritually and technically. I sit in my home studio and record things by myself. I don't need to get anybody's approval or validation.

If I'm going to go out to be a solo artist, it's because I want to do something different without having to wait on someone else's schedule or hobbies or be limited by other people's prejudices. I'd be kind of stupid not to exercise that.

If I only acted, I feel like I wouldn't have enough creative expression over my own sensibility, and also if I only acted, the notion of surrendering my fate and future to other people is deeply unsettling to me and it would make me uncomfortable.

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

I don't want to use my creative energy on somebody else's user interface.

As a self-published author, you have the choice. Embrace the power to create a book that is truly yours. Don't be a whiner or a copycat.

When it came to my art, I went my own way and did not follow the trends.

My goal was, and still is, to write first, direct my own stuff whenever possible and control my own creative destiny.

All greatness of character is dependent on individuality.

I want to be free to be any version of me I feel like being. I don't want to be McDonald's that serves the same food every time.

I've been wanting to produce for some time because I want to have more creative control over the things that I do and not be victim to the whims of other people's desires.

I would never tell someone else how to use their platform, because I think I'm much more comfortable allowing the work that I do to speak for itself.

I don't want people to just hand me music and be like, 'Here, you sound good on this. Sing it.' I want to be able to say, 'This is me.'

If you paint a picture and I paint a picture, we each want to do it our own way. And we'll stand or fall on whatever we did.

Honestly, I never felt like I wasn't an artist on my own. I always felt like the music I made was mine, whether it was part of a collaboration with people.

I don't see myself in competition with anyone, I am in my own space; I don't follow anyone, though I appreciate good work always.

If you look at somebody like Sam Bee, she got to create her own thing without any expectations that there was a show there. That was probably liberating for them.

When I can make music and don't have to think about anyone else's ideas or voice - when I'm making something that only I can make - it feels good. It's nice when you can find a sound that only you can make. No one else can make 'Cosmogramma.' No one else can make 'Until the Quiet Comes.'

I've told people before that I don't want to be a part of a genre; I want to be my own genre. I want to create it.