Thom Mayne Quotes

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

When artists make art, they shouldn't question whether it is permissible to do one thing or another.

My greatest achievement is being able to write records that are real snapshots of what's going on in my life. I won't repeat myself for the sake of commerce, or to please other people.

All any artist can do is please themselves.

I only write music for myself, I don't try and appeal to anyone else.

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 think every artist would love to just please themselves musically all day long.

The artist is not responsible to any one. His social role is asocial... his only responsibility consists in an attitude to the work he does.

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.

The rule I stand by as an artist is definitely be yourself, and don't make music just for other people: make it for you first.

It doesn't matter even if I am slow or fast as long as my films are honest and carries my integrity.

I want to make decisions as to where I want to go as an artist, and to get to it in my own way

Basically I just had to say, 'Screw everyone around me - from now on I'm just gonna play what I think is important to me and our music.' So I gave the big finger to all the current trends in technical wizardry, and just went off and did what I felt was best for the songs.

You learn early as an actor that creating your own material is the only way to have any control.

When I did TV shows and my other movies, I never try to do it for anybody. I just do what I think is good no matter what the genre is.

When you go out to make something, you want it to be great. You need to put a bubble around that, so no one can get into the force field and change what you're setting out to make. That's all us being producers is doing, is allowing our power to protect the integrity of what you're doing.

Art for art's sake, and creation for creation's sake, and love for love's sake

It's not like I go into the studio and say I'm going to try to make music to prove to somebody that I can make music.

An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself.

As a man has no right to kill one of his children if it is diseased or insane, so a man who has made the gradual and conscious expression of his personality in literature the aim of his life, has no right to suppress himself any carefully considered work which seemed good enough when it was written. Suppression, if it is deserved, will come rapidly enough from the same causes that suppress the unworthy members of a man's family.

There's such a freedom about being an artist... You're not accountable - you're this renegade thing.

For instance, I may bring a certain feminist perspective to my songwriting, because that's how I see life. I'm interested in art, poetry, and music. As that kind of artist, I can do anything. I can say anything. It's about self-expression. It knows no package - there's no such thing. That's what being an artist is.

I paint what I see and not what others like to see.

It began when I was so ill that there was a good chance of dying. I promised myself that if I survived I would never again pander to a magazine's requests or follow the ideas of art directors. I would only make images which were personal, which arose out of my own life.