Amanda Foreman Quotes

I think that to explore the uncomfortable and the politically incorrect is the job of the artist.

We're all so mauled by information, but it's recycled information. We need to shut it out. So, you've got to get bizarre. This is an artist's purpose - to break away from the recycled. Performance art can do that.

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

Art has an obligation to offend

Political correctness is the fascism of the 90's, it is this rigid feeling that you have to keep your ideas and your way of looking at things within very narrow boundaries or else you'll offend someone. Certainly one of the purposes of journalism is to challenge just that way of thinking, and certainly one of the purposes of criticism is to break boundaries, that's also one of the purposes of art.

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

Theater represents to me this phenomenon in juxtaposition to real life, where there are all these imposed guidelines.

Hip-hop can be limiting and I refuse to accept limits.

As an artist you actually do have to make a choice to be an outsider. If you're an outsider you have the freedom to say what people on the inside don't dare to say.

Rules and models destroy genius and art.

Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.

People might say I'm difficult, but did you ever hear anyone describe a label as 'difficult'? By nature, artists should challenge. When they call you difficult, it is a reflection of the imbalance of power.

If you're politically correct, chances are you're not coming to one of my shows. I get to go onstage and say things that everybody thinks all the time, but can't say out loud.

I need to be free, to speak the unspeakable. You can't do that in office.

Not many people were speaking truth to power in the '80s. I had a really good time doing it - I found it gratifying. It was a joy to have an opportunity to say what you believed. It's challenging to do it in fiction, but I liked writing the novels. I liked writing 'Democracy' particularly.

Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized.

Art must take reality by surprise.

There's always that argument to make - that you're in better company historically if people don't understand what you're doing.

I don't think an artist should keep themselves categorized in a specific box.

All literatures can have political uses and misuses. Sometimes politics can enhance, sometimes it can get in the way of imaginative literature...

It is not the writer's task to answer questions but to question answers. To be impertinent, insolent, and, if necessary, subversive.

All I really want to do is things I haven't done. 'I'm gonna put a paper bag on my head and be on the cover of 'Billboard,' see what I can get away with - if they'll let me.' And they let me. And I am literally giggling inside for, like, a month that I got away with it.

In fiction, we are not bound by social convention, so the things that mystify and unsettle are allowed to rise to the surface.

In the end, censoring a comedian's jokes is on par with censoring 'Huckleberry Finn.' Now, I'm not comparing myself to Mark Twain - he had much wavier hair and a slightly thicker mustache. But when you deny an artist the chance to explore his art, you're forcing your beliefs on him.

I've certainly never liked the idea of being put in a box. I loved being part of shows like 'American Idiot' and 'In the Heights,' and I take pride in being able to sing different styles, not just 'Old Man River.'