Raymond Chandler Quotes

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.

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

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.

Sure, I can talk like you, but I choose not to, It's like an art, you know? Picasso had to prove to the world he could paint the right way, before he goes putting both eyes on the side of a face... See if you paint wrong because that's the best you can do, you just a chump. But you do it because you want to? Then you're an artist...You can take that to the grave and dig it up when you need it.

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.

Sometimes, there's a preconceived notion of how a scene or how a work should be delivered. And I see young performers sometimes try and deliver that, and it's not really true to their voice or who they are.

I never think about what others are doing. I do a film for myself, not others.

I don't try to guess what a million people will like. It's hard enough to know what I like.

I don't want ever to be guilty of what my critics claim: doing formula without original elements.

Any system that sees aesthetics as irrelevant, that separates the artist from his product, that fragments the work of the individual, or creates by committee, or makes mincemeat of the creative process will, in the long run, diminish not only the product but the maker as well.

I just want to make my music, and I want it to stand on its own.

There were times in my career when I would try to write songs like Bob Dylan... Artists get hooked up in that. To be a follower, you lose.

Books are not brands. Some people are very willing to see themselves as a brand, but you can't be a certain type of writer to a certain type of person all the time. It will kill you.

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

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.

It's the duty of all novelists, all painters, all musicians, all people who try to make art move: to look for something they feel authentically, without paying attention to styles.

I don't just want to be another cog in the gears of Hollywood.

Just trying to be different - when I hear something - I don't like to go trampling on other people's sounds.

When it came to my art, I went my own way and did not follow the trends.

The condition every art requires is, not so much freedom from restriction, as freedom from adulteration and from the intrusion of foreign matter.

I never set out to make a movie that was everything to everybody; if that were the case, we could all just take a picture of a tree and agree that the tree is beautiful and move on with our lives. I wouldn't even need to show up.

All the power to them but I'm not interested in making yet another show that looks like some other show.