Esa-Pekka Salonen Quotes

Artists live in unknown spaces and give themselves over to following something unknown.

Interesting things happen when the creative impulse is cultivated with curiosity, freedom and intensity.

Art is a form of exploration, of sailing off into the unknown alone, heading for those unmarked places on the map. If children are not permitted-not taught-to be adventurers and explorers as children, what will become of the world of adventure, of stories, of literature itself?

We live in a world where art is always looked upon as the perfect medium. We live in a society where we can alter our body parts, we can act in the most perfect or right way. A lot of that is dangerous because, especially in the world of art, the chief enemy of creativity is being safe. If you're safe, you can't fall and hurt yourself. The older you are, the further down the crash is going to be. But if it works out, the higher the high.

I'm all about freedom in art. I'm from Texas, so when someone tells you which way to ride your horse, you think 'I'll just go to a different ranch. You guys are riding it backwards anyway.

Isn't art about breaking rules, about challenging existing systems, isn't it about discovering meaning in things or situations before others see anything in them??

Not to be boxed in, to be able to transcend boundaries: for an artist, it's essential.

I'm American. I'm eclectic. I'm going to follow my musical passions. And if people don't like it, and it hurts my legacy, I'm not going to worry about that.

I am proud being an artist who takes risks, who would walk off a cliff artistically. I won't settle for commercial reasons.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

All the traditional models for doing things are collapsing; from music to publishing to film, and it's a wide open door for people who are creative to do what they need to do without having institutions block their art.

Anyway I feel myself a bit on the edge on the art world, but I don't mind, I'm just pursuing my work in a very excited way. And there isn't really a mainstream anymore, is there?

I've realised that if I aim for a successful record, I probably won't have any success. But if I keep making weird things, then hopefully the audiences will come to us.

I'm experimental by nature... always exploring my creativity.

My friend Harry Nilsson used to say the definition of an artist was someone who rode way ahead of the herd and was sort of the lookout. Now you don't have to be that, to be an artist. You can be right smack-dab in the middle of the herd. If you are, you'll be the richest.

When artists make art, they shouldn't question whether it is permissible to do one thing or another.

I guess I much prefer the path of the contrarian: the guy who goes against the grain a bit. The careers of the people who I admire deeply - like the Coen brothers and Soderbergh - don't repeat themselves, and they make radically different films at times, and I think that's wonderful.

I love to get to that place where I don't know what kind of music I'm doing; I don't know if it's any good. I don't know if it's anything. It's a big question mark. The idea is to have interesting results. That's my bottom line.

What guides me is to do work that's more avant-garde - things that I think are special. You can easily become a celebrity and get caught up in all that blur. I just want to work and surprise myself.

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different.

The wonderful thing about being an artist in L.A. is that there is no taste. There's anarchy of taste, which seems good to me.

Society may shun bohemia, may put it down, may consider it useless and ineffective, but it is where everything cooks and boils and is created.

That word 'fantasy' - I hardly ever hear it in the world of design. And that's very strange. You should hear it a lot. I think fantasy is a very important value that designers and artists should bring to the world.