Spalding Gray Quotes

There's a good many pictures I'd like to make; we'll see how many I'll be allowed to make.

When you give an artist a canvas, you shouldn't tell him exactly how much paint to put on it, or exactly how sharp the images should be. You should let the artist get going.

Since I write the lyrics, I don't want to be pigeonholed into a person who's out there preaching these songs. If you read the lyrics, there isn't a story being set up for you. You have to use your imagination to get the best out of the songs - if you choose to do that.

One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you'd rather be in.

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 left Mexico for artistic survival. If I had stayed, I would have been forced by the government, who control the movie business, to direct TV shows or commercials or infomercials for the government.

You have to work with what you are given, even in Shakespeare. we have our form and it is important that we free ourselves through it.

I'm not an artist who has an agenda that's set by the work.

I just wanted to be an artist. I didn't care how or what; I just wanted to express my artistic integrity, and I wanted the world to have a vision of what I was seeing in my mind.

In order to understand what they need to understand, in order to write what they write, they have to be free. And yet, they aren't ever free. They are not free because they are not free of the constrictions their art puts on them.

Film has the potential of allowing me to explore my own ideas, which I find very attractive.

There's not a lot of art forms where you can control your presentation and your ideas.

I want a performance style that's more cerebral and emotional than physical. I want to be a creative artist, not a whirling dervish.

When the uncreative tell the creative what to do, it stops being art.

I think that's what art is about: to provoke you. It helps me make sense of a senseless universe because I become the god of the story. I create it, and I see it in all its lineaments in my own way and can control it - in a world in which everything else is out of control.

My visual medium is my videos, and I've got to feel as though I can put my truth in that.

I just write what I write, produce the music I produce and try to give myself a chance to stay true to the art form. If you try to rein in an art form, it can be hurtful to what you are making.

If the story-teller is to nourish the roots of his culture, society must set him free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

I am not really interested in only showcasing my life or work but plan to produce, write and create work that is solely my vision.

I feel very strongly as a writer and as a director it is not my job to crush the audience's imagination.

As a director and a creative person, I can say banning anything is wrong.

Art is not a democracy, in fact art is the enemy of democracy

An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.

People should be stopped from writing poetry. There's far too much of it. And if they're any good, they'll go ahead anyways.

The worst thing you can do to anybody trying to be creative is to demand participation in their vision.