Charles Peguy Quotes

I feel what I sing, and I sing what I feel. Really, that's all I can do.

There are contemporary artists that I hate with all my heart. These are provocateurs that are without feeling. Where is the real emotion?

If I can't be honest with music, forget it.

People don't really need to question our sincerity when it comes to our songs.

Natural emotion is the soul of poetry, as melody is of music; the same faults are engendered by over-study of either art; there is a lack of sincerity, of irresistible impulse in both the poet and the, composer.

Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

In art there is a need for truth, not sincerity.

If I did a Rock record, it would be equally as truthful because I love Rock. I had to actually sing to Bon Jovi one time and I felt like he believed me. He's one of my favorite artists, so there's nothing better than the truth.

The man who reacts to the universe with a cry of impotent anguish is acceptable as an artist only if he can persuade us that he has sanely considered the other possible reactions and found them inadequate.

An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity.

If you're an artist like a really, really long time, it stops being a performance. I'm not performing anymore. I reveal myself to the audience... I show you some of me. It's not a show no more.

I don't agree with this romantic fantasy that people who suffer from depression are more likely to be artists. I find that I am more creative when I am happy actually.

My aim is to be understood by everyone. I reject the 'depth' that people demand nowadays, into which you can never descend without a diving bell crammed with cabbalistic bullshit and intellectual metaphysics. This expressionistic anarchy has got to stop... A day will come when the artist will no longer be this bohemian, puffed-up anarchist but a healthy man working in clarity within a collectivist society.

I believe honesty comes across in music because for [most] people music isn't just something to dance to.

Romanticism is the mother of kitsch and that there are moments when the child becomes so like its mother that one cannot differentiate between them

The two important facts I should say, are emotion, and then words arising from emotion. I don't think you can write in an emotionless way. If you attempt it, the result is artificial. I don't like that kind of writing. I think that if a poem is really great, you should think of it as having written itself despite the author. It should flow.

An artist is the only thing I want to be. I only want my freedom and my creativity. It's all that I live for. I reject the idea that I have to take all the costumes and makeup off to be f - king authentic.

When you showed someone how you felt, it was fesh and honest. Whe you told someone how you felt, there might be nothing behind the words but habit or expectation.

If I knew what I was doing, I'd be doing it right now. I would be the best damn poet, silver words out of my mouth. My words might not be magic, but they cut straight to the truth. So if you need a lover and a friend, baby, I'm in.

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

The great artists do not seek their forms in the midst of the past, but take the deepest soundings they can of the genuine, profoundest of their age.

MANY MANAGE TO SEPARATE THEIR LIFE FROM THEIR FILMS. THEY LIVE ONE WAY AND EXPRESS OTHER IDEAS IN THEIR WORKS. THEY ARE ABLE TO SPLIT THEIR CONSCIENCE. I CAN'T. TO ME CINEMA IS NOT JUST MY JOB: IT'S MY LIFE, AND EACH FILM IS AN ACT OF MY LIFE.

I have heard what poets write about women. They rhyme and rhapsodize and lie. I have watched sailors on the shore stare mutely at the slow-rolling swell of the sea. I have watched old soldiers with hearts like leather grow teary-eyed at their king's colors stretched against the wind. Listen to me: these men know nothing of love. You will not find it in the words of poets or the longing eyes of sailors. If you want to know of love, look to a trouper's hands as he makes his music. A trouper knows.

It's a weird job because making music or writing a song is a personal thing... and it kind of has to be. You can always tell when people are faking.