Frank Ocean Quotes

I guess if you take yourself seriously as an artist there starts either the problem or the beauty of doing good artwork.

And ultimately the people who produce my records, they know that they're here to serve the purpose of me expressing who I am at this period of time and augmenting that or pulling it forward and I love that process.

Traffic' was an album that had a significant amount of songs. It was not complete and I felt didn't fully represent me as a person or as the artist I want to be and so when I started the writing process for 'The Autobiography' I was really turning a corner in my life.

I made a quote-unquote 'album' for my senior project of high school. As soon as I finished making it I realized it wasn't the kind of music I wanted to make.

An artist's life is supposed to lead toward his masterpiece, not away from it.

The problem of making the inner meet the outer of today is, of course, the function of the artist.

I think you always, as an artist, feel like you would like to be more and more specific about your intent and your interests.

I'm not so sure I 'like' to watch myself on film, but I do find it necessary in order to continually be a better artist.

I think, like any artist, those baby songs are not the best things you've ever written, but they count because they're you're first attempts at creating art and expressing yourself.

The magic question is, 'What for?' But art is not for anything. Art is the ultimate goal.

Obviously with every new album we make, we always have to believe in it and feel we've gone in the right direction.

I feel like I always describe myself as a late bloomer. My first album, in my mind, was that I had a few songs I needed to take from incomplete demos to working with someone else and finishing them.

I don't write for a particular audience. I work as an artist, and I think the audience of one, which is the self, and I have to satisfy myself as an artist. So I always say that I write for the same people that Picasso painted for. I think he painted for himself.

I think that's always the goal of art, is to make people ask themselves questions.

Joanne' is a progression for me. It was about going into the studio and forgetting that I was famous.

Create something for yourself that you feel proud of, that you are in control of, that gives you a better understanding of the type of artist you want to be.

Playing in my early bands, working as a studio musician, producing and going to art school was, in retrospect, my apprenticeship. I was learning and creating a solid foundation of ideas, but I wasn't really playing music.

To be an artist is to doubt yourself and try harder.

You have to write and develop and wait for the world to catch up to your art.

It's important to see the work of as many directors as possible but you must not become self-conscious. You have to accept that your first attempts are going to be quite rough compared to the finished works of great masters.

I just think that there is something that keeps us together, to keep doing what we're doing. I can't really put my finger on it other than each record is like a little snapshot of my life at that particular moment, the way I play, the way I sound, the way I wrote, the way I sing, I can hear it.

I wear my heart on my sleeve, and whatever I was giving, it was just coming from my natural place at that time. And you know, some albums I've made, I look back and think they were great, and then some I look at, and I think that wasn't right at the time.

Music is my form of cleansing and introspection, so I have to grow in order to accomplish it.

We always try to make each record a snapshot of the band at that time.

Art is giving to what you create a soul.