Neal Shusterman Quotes

All art is based on non-conformity.

I don't want ever to be guilty of what my critics claim: doing formula without original elements.

Just trying to be different - when I hear something - I don't like to go trampling on other people's sounds.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

It's time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. Stop settling for what's good enough and start creating art that matters.

Every artist of importance creates his own world, with its own laws - creates and shapes it in his own shape and image, and no one else's. This is why it is difficult to fit the artist into a world that has already been created, a seven-day, fixed and solidified world: he will inevitably slip out of the set of laws and paragraphs, he will be a heretic.

I remember when I was in art classes, I hated following the assignments. And I would get in trouble for doing something totally different or taking it in a weird direction.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

When you're an artist, all you're trying to do is self-express.

It does not matter how badly you paint so long as you don't paint badly like other people.

Art is maybe a subversive activity. There is a certain rebellion when you are an artist at heart, even if only in the art of living.

I don't worry about what everyone wants to see. I make movies that please a writer, director and myself. I always think there are enough people smart as me and sensitive as me.

I always had that sense of being censored for the things that I thought. Why is it wrong to embroider your pants, or paint with acrylics on your clothing? Why is that weird? Isn't it weirder to want to be like everyone else?

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.

I'm a little insane, and I'm going to be a little different. But hopefully, somewhere in there, in that creative arena, something will emerge that is new and different and unique.

As an artist, I try not to sound the same as others. Or even as myself.

I like more the fact that I like to think out of the box. Thinking out of the box goes along with dressing out of the box and living out of the box.

This is what it is the business of the artist to do. Art is theft, art is armed robbery, art is not pleasing your mother.

Art = a mad search for individualism.

You're free to do anything you want with your company. It's more like art. You don't have to follow any norms. It's an expression of how you feel the world should be. When you make a company, that's your little place to make your own little utopia.

Creativity is an act of defiance.

Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about.

I don't chase what everyone else is looking for. Being creative is all about you.

Art isn't about following the rules. It's about breaking them.

I am an artist who's just tryin' to do something different, and basically not caring about everybody's opinions and wanting to follow what everybody else is doing. At the same time, I know when to be serious, but I know when to joke.