Stephen Stills Quotes

I could never sit down and say: I'm going to do an out-and-out comedy, just to prove to people I can. You've just got to do what you do. Just listen to your soul and do your art and do it for the right reasons, and then you can't fail.

I mean my point as an artist is I'm on my own little weird journey across the sky here and whether or not anybody's listening, or listening to the degree I would like them to, at the end of the day has to be an inconsequential thing because I can't chase this culture.

Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art.

If the only people we seek to impress are within our own ivory towers of artistic excellence or our hallowed institutions, we will find the audience is gone in 20 to 30 years. I find as I keep a broader audience in mind, I choose to sing and say more things I actually want to share and fewer things just for the sake of impressing others.

As an artist, you need to be true to yourself and free and not put yourself in a box that contradicts with what you feel is needed for a song.

I'm very selfish. I make music that I love because I only live once, and I'm an artist. I don't try to revolt against anybody, and I don't try to please anybody. I feel very strongly that I if love it, someone else will love it - not everybody, though.

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.

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.

I want to make music that I like; not something that I have to make because I think it's going to sell.

What's the point if you make something that's not you, and you're successful? You have to perform it the rest of your life.

I've always enjoyed feeling a connection to the avant-garde, such as Dada and surrealism and pop art. The only thing the artist can do is be honest with themselves and make the art they want to make. That's what I've always done.

If I was just to shut up, I wouldn't be a true artist.

I think the key to making records generally is to make 'em for yourself, regardless of the climate in the business.

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

I think every artist should follow their vision; their hearts is what they need to reveal, not something that society is looking out for. That said though, I think also artists have, continuously good artists, have been good for their times.

There's a difference between a pop star and an artist. Pop stars have to be perfect all the time; an artist is allowed, on occasion, to suck. And I put myself in that category because I sometimes suck. I'm not trying to please the masses. It's not going to happen, so I don't try.

The minute you succumb to outside pressure, you cease to be creative.

You want to feel that you can do something creative that you love without being picked apart and mutilated for other people's pleasure.

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.'

It's the duty of all novelists, all painters, all musicians, all people who try to make art move: to look for something they feel authentically, without paying attention to styles.

I left because I could no longer make records that sounded less and less like me. I tried to please people instead of believing in my own strength, until the only thing I could do was walk away.

I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know.

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.

I think every artist should follow their vision, their hearts is what they need to reveal, not something that society is looking out for.

When I left the Royal College, I decided I would only make paintings that I would want to look at myself, that felt close to my life.