Joni Mitchell Quotes

If you're serious about singing or acting, which are two art forms that get repetitive, the way to keep the music fresh is to recognize that it is totally impossible for it to ever be the same, night after night. You open your mouth and you'd like a certain sound to come out of it, but it doesn't always come out exactly like you thought it was going to come out!

Good or bad, the one thing I can say about my art is, if I can quote Sinatra, I did it my way.

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.

The downside of videos is that it will put my vision in front of other people, so they might not get the chance to create their own.

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

I'm not the average artist.

Most artists like to think of themselves as rugged individualists, as independent characters.

I wanted to make my sophomore film as different as possible. I didn't want to be pigeonholed. I didn't want to be identifiable.

The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.

There a lot of other things I love to do. I consider myself as an artist, so I dance, I paint, I sing, so as long as I'm creating, I'm happy.

If you're not trying to be real, you don't have to get it right. That's art.

I know that whatever I put out, whether people think it's pop or noise or whatever, it's always going to be some kind of a freak or mutation. It's not going to be anything pure that a lot of people will relate to. And that's fine.

One thing I don't understand is how people want you to replicate your past successes. Being an artist should be about freedom and not just becoming one thing, because I think that's terrible and boring.

People classify things and that's fair enough. But if somebody wants to make something different, that doesn't make them any less of an artist.

For creators, especially for me as a composer, I am sure for singers also, it is sad. It is not exciting that we have to create something that someone else has already done before.

I want to be my own artist and reflect my creativity.. I don't want to be turned into a pop princess; that's not who I am.

I'm a creative person, and I'm gonna be creative, so whoever's upset because of that, that's too bad.

I don't know, I really try not to pay attention to comparisons, 'cause I'm my own artist. I try to build my own sound.

To be an artist that is fully original, it doesn't exist.

I spent the first part of my career trying to avoid genre because I felt like genre, in some way, was cliche.

Art doesn't go to sleep in the bed made for it. It would sooner run away than say its own name: what it likes is to be incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what its own name is.

I paint for myself. I don't know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.

Creativity is seeing what everyone else sees, but then thinking a new thought that has never been thought before and expressing it somehow. It could be with art, a sculpture, music or even in science. The difference, however, between scientific creativity and any other kind of creativity, is that no matter how long you wait, no one else will ever compose "Beethoven's Ninth Symphony" except for Beethoven. No matter what you do, no one else will paint Van Gogh's "Starry Night." Only Van Gogh could do that because it came from his creativity.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. ...Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has known. I am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of Individualism that the world has known. ...Art is Individualism.

Making art is complicated because the categories are always changing. You just have to make your own art, and whatever categories it falls into will come later.