Michael Feinstein Quotes

It's important for me that anything I lend my stamp to must have a perspective that is uniquely mine.

Whatever is about you that is translated into your art, that's gonna keep you completly original and fresh and I just think that, that's just the best advice I can give, to an artist creatively.

I do not feel any artist can produce great art without putting great personality into it. It is always a piece of you that goes on the screen or the canvass.

That's the most important part of all the music I produce: making sure the artist is bringing themselves out in the music.

As an artist I have always tried to be faithful to my vision of life, and I have frequently been in conflict with those who wanted me to paint not what I saw but what they wished me to see.

This 'Making Mirrors' album is far more personal, even if there's a character element to the sounds I'm working with. Every song on this album I stand behind; I feel like I have a close relationship with them. There are older songs where I can feel myself writing a story, so this is the first album where I'm proud of every lyric.'

What I have to offer as a writer/director is the stuff with the feeling in it.

I think every actor brings something personal to a role, right?

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.

People used to say nobody can sing my songs but me - they're too personal.

The artists who stand out to me have a passion for what they do. There are a lot of people who can sing. It's just like when you go to church and people are singing because it sounds good, not because it feels good. There's a difference.

Well, I make every song I sing personal. I've never chosen a song that wasn't.

I sometimes think it's better to go with a bad movie that is true to a certain point of view than to take something and make people try to like it when they're not supposed to.

When I write songs for myself it's really personal and I just can't have someone else singing it.

I don't see myself as the boss. I sing and write the songs, and it would feel strange if somebody else wrote the lyrics I sang.

With every character, I just bring something that I can make my own.

I learned early in my writing career that if I try to tailor a song for someone else, I'm usually off base. They're usually looking for something from you with your character.

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 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.

Fantasy isn't something I put into the pictures; I don't try and inject them with a sense of play. But it's about being an honest photographer; a photograph is as much of a mirror of the photographer as it is the subject.

I think as a director you have to make it your own. It'd be a mistake to approach a project with the idea of 'I'm going to do this the way I think somebody else would,' because then you'd never be clear on your idea.

Some day I'm gonna be gone and people will be listening to my songs and conjuring me up. In order for that to happen, you gotta put something of yourself in it.

I wanted to come through with my own voice and, hopefully, have it affect people. I want people to know that I'm not an Elvis impersonator.

My films, no one else will do.

That's something that I think the best artists retain - the ability to invite you into their small, intimate inner space, and let that be what radiates.