The Edge Quotes

In the world of creativity, laziness translates into an inability to be rigorous enough to create fearlessly. It makes us plagiarise or water our creativity down to make it more acceptable to the public.

What guides me is to do work that's more avant-garde - things that I think are special. You can easily become a celebrity and get caught up in all that blur. I just want to work and surprise myself.

One of my life philosophies is that you have a choice to make when you're doing something creative. You can be cheesy... or you can be lame.

There has to be that zeal to do something new and surprise yourself and audiences. You have to stay true to your craft, and that should never be sidelined.

No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work's sake, and what men call originality will come unsought.

What's the point if you make something that's not you, and you're successful? You have to perform it the rest of your life.

If you stick with a vision, it might not all work, but some of it will be absolute genius. To me, 15 minutes worth of absolute genius in a film is so much better than two hours of mediocrity. I would rather pay to see something different like that.

I want that every piece of art be honest, never mind what it is about.

You hear again and again that audiences want to see movies that are different, and critics say we make the same thing again and again in Hollywood, then you go and make something different, and you get kicked in the gut for it.

Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response.

If you start to just aim for what the audience wants to hear, you're already hamstrung because you don't have any freedom.

Never try to make the same record twice, even when people are screaming for the same sound.

If you're trying to please everyone, then you're not going to make anything that is honestly yours, I don't think, in the long run.

I'm always looking for something that's real and that's got meat on it. I think it's artistic suicide if you're too vain, or if you're afraid to play ugly. I would never fall for that.

You want to do something, you want to have the bravery to do something original. And there will always be people who are like, the classicists who are like, 'No, but it's got to have this.' In life, there are people like that attached to every single thing that there is. These are the same people that are like, still playing vinyl.

I am real, real picky with what I decided to do. I want to make sure it's new and at the same time that it's in the same color of what I have played before. Not to pigeon hole myself but I don't like to do fluff.

There's no room for being a visionary in the studio system. It literally cannot exist.

I'd much rather fail than do something like 'The Chorus Line' movie, sanitized and Hollywoodized.

I think if you try to tailor your act to anybody, you end up with an act that doesn't work anyway.

The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

Well, the stuff that has become more commercial doesn't have any edge.

Don't ever write just for a trend or fad, because it's a moving target, and by the time you get your work out there, the trend or fad is gone. Dig deep; don't be afraid to write fiercely. Expose your heart.

You can tell an honest artist from one who's just given all their songs.

You know, there's so much imitation and so much pandering in Hollywood.