David Cronenberg Quotes

The ugliest spectacle is that of artists selling themselves. Art as a commodity is an ugly idea... The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist.

I think the biggest thing that people fear when it comes to art becoming a business is those authentic, pure aspirations of art being compromised.

To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.

I just want to produce and create projects that I'm passionate about and I love.

The trouble with movies as a business is that it's an art, and the trouble with movies as art is that it's a business.

I'm not looking to be an artist to make money. I'm looking to be an artist.

I'm confident in my intentions and why I'm making music. I'm not making music because I want to be on your TV screen or the cover of your magazine.

I hope to live all my life for my art, without abandoning my principles one iota.

Once you decide that it is the art that is important and not how popular and well received you are, you no longer have an albatross.

I don't do any art to please any people.

It's hard when people are expecting things from you, and all you're trying to do is write songs that you like for yourself.

I was in school for four years writing music to please my teachers. That was not music I liked. And when I make music that isn't for something I want to make, and it's to please other people, it's - the outcome is really bad.

I should be satisfied first as an actor with my work. I will not do something because everyone is doing it.

My ambition was never to make a lot of money. It wasn't to travel around the world. I was really just struggling to make the best pictures I could make.

When you're working in service to a big project, there's always the question of, 'Is there total freedom to do what I think is right artistically, or is this a job?' It's okay for things to be a job. I'm perfectly comfortable working. I don't need to sit around and quench whatever personal artistic thirst I have at all times.

Poetry is probably the last gift economy. Part of the negotiation is to understand that you're going to do something you really want to do, so you're going to take whatever life comes with that.

If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can't be trusted.

To express what is the most moral, healthful and beautiful in art this is the mission of the dancer, and to this I dedicate my life.

The challenge artists face today is whether to be an underground, unheard genius, or to dilute their art for the marketplace.

Art for art's sake, and creation for creation's sake, and love for love's sake

I approach my music-making as an art-form--something pure from the spirit to which I can add dynamics and marketable reality. Music is genuine and healthy and the stimulation I get from molding it and adding dynamics is like nothing else on earth.

There is only one Art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth. ... Thus, from the standpoint of the work and its worth it is irrelevant to which political ideas the artist as a citizen claims allegiance, which ideas he would like to serve with his work or whether he holds any such ideas at all.

Work is what you do for others, liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.

Art is a tyrant. It demands heart, brain, soul, body. The entireness of the votary. Nothing less will win its highest favor. I wed art. It is my husband, my world, my life dream, the air I breathe. I know nothing else, feel nothing else, think nothing else.

You stand your ground and you perform your art. That's what the artist does. The artist is about perfection.