Talib Kweli Quotes

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

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'm not an artist who has an agenda that's set by the work.

I've found that if you just try to make the film you want, you'll find the right audience. If you try to please everyone, you're going to make really boring films.

When you give an artist a canvas, you shouldn't tell him exactly how much paint to put on it, or exactly how sharp the images should be. You should let the artist get going.

As a director, you never think about how an audience would respond. You can think about that, but you will never change what you're going to do.

It's good to please the network, but you really just have to tell the stories you want to tell, and if you try to please other people, it ends up starting to water stuff down. Those decisions we have to make are hard, but we usually just err on the side of 'What would we want to see?'

I'm worried a lot of our work day as artists is a producer's creation - not an artist's creation.

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

I'm not going to compromise my artistic integrity.

I make films, and I hope that people come to see them. If they don't, I pay a big price. But I can't make decisions where I would change my own standards or my own taste in order to court the public in some way.

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

I try to make my music interesting to me first, then hopefully other people will find it interesting, too.

In art, at a certain level, there is no 'better than.' It's just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it.

You have to make films you feel strongly about. And then hope you can find the audience.

When I write a book... it's the same essential approach to music as with books. It has to be something I want to hear or read. Hopefully the audience comes along, since that's the only way you can write righteously. I have to ask, 'What do I want to hear?' not 'What do people want to hear?'

I think most artists would be happy to have bigger audiences rather than smaller ones. It doesn't mean that they are going to change their work in order necessarily to get it, but they're happy if they do get it.

I gotta make a living. I make no bones about that. Most actors do. But within that context, I've never not tried to make something as fresh and alive as I possibly could make it.

The artist is not responsible to any one. His social role is asocial... his only responsibility consists in an attitude to the work he does.

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.

I have to be able to be the artist that I am.

If I knew anything about what people wanted and was popular, I'd still be writing for 'Saturday Night Live'. I can only write what I want, and hopefully people will like it.

I want people to come see my films and enjoy them, but at the end of the day you can't control what people think.

The responsibility of an artist is to be honest with themselves.

I don't want to sound like an aesthete, but one has to be true to the art. And that means being true to the tradition of the art but also being true to your own artistic vision.