Willa Cather Quotes

In the music industry, we value large success. I realized that while I would like that, that it's not what my writing is about. And if I start making it about that, it becomes impure.

I really believe in not compromising your art. I feel like I've never compromised my art.

Rozay is an artist himself so he understands the importance of being true to your work.

I think the worst thing in the world is for artists to produce themselves.

I would rather die than be a serious artist, or a fake artist.

What you're really after when you see a film or listen to a song is a singular vision, and I'm not sure how much of that you really get in Hollywood.

When I'm writing music, I'm not playing a character. I'm not Alice Cooper or Gene Simmons or someone like that, who has acknowledged that they are writing music for a character.

I can't constantly be trying to write the unwritten song, the song that the 15-year-old girl needs. I need to write the song that I need.

The most honest form of filmmaking is to make a film for yourself.

I coined this term 'freedom thru limitation' back in the '90s because I was sick of art being treated like pop, because of this boring 'anything can be art' theory.

The worst state of affairs is when science begins to concern itself with art.

The only way for me to be an artist is to be honest in my craft. If I veer from that, I'm not giving the investors what they want. Sometimes it's my job as an artist to know what I want to do, even when the fans tell me different.

I'm always looking for a reason to say no when I'm approached about a big studio tentpole because your fear is will you be consumed into the anonymous machine, and it will suck out any specificity and point of view that you might hope to express.

My biggest challenge was to make sure that the songs I did were who I am.

If I've done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you know too much about the writer.

I've never put out a song that I wasn't completely proud of and that I didn't love. In that sense, I've never felt like I sold out in any way.

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.

I will never permit myself to give in to American taste and lower the standards of art.

When I started off as an actor, the last thing I wanted to do in the world was make money. I was under the impression, when I started off as an actor, that the more money I made, the more it would diminish from my creativity and my capacity to be an artist.

I'd love more production houses to encourage artists to create what they want and not just churn things out.

As many have said before me, artists are creative people who can't be dragged into the politics of nations. I have always made a concerted effort to maintain this standard for myself.

An artiste can only be happy when he is true to his art.

I feel like there's a lot of pressure on artists to be 100-percent organic all the time.

Some musicians feel they have to provide what their audiences expect. They lose the distinction between an artist and an entertainer. I am not an entertainer.

Such is the impurity of our enterprise, as writers or as critics, that even in the act of proclaiming our freedom from the demands of authenticity, we are never free from brandishing it.