Benji Madden Quotes

My sense is, I think it's okay for directors to do movies that speak to other work in their career.

I allowed artists to play for as long as they felt they could justifiably continue to create.

What's been nice is that I've been able to direct from a very idealistic place. I've never had to make my living as a director, which gave me a chance to choose material I feel passionate about. The directing allows me to not have to grab any acting role that comes along. I can pick and choose a little bit.

I have my own language and it's high time I put a little of it out there.

People choose whatever projects they've seen that I've done over the years, and whichever one is their favorite is the only one they care about. But I realized that none of those were my voice or representative of what my thoughts and feelings were.

I tried working with the best of directors and producers. I tried being selective, but things didn't work out. Now, I am open to working with anybody and everybody who is good. Or I'll try to make it good. That suits me.

With Metro Station, there were too many people trying to control us. That's not the thing you should do with an artist, I think.

We are so grateful we are given the chance and the freedom to do what we want, what we want to create, what's on our mind, and that's honestly what we asked for in the beginning of our career.

The artist as an artist must be an anarchist

Whenever I become discouraged (which is on alternate Tuesdays, between three and four) I lift my spirits by remembering: The artists are on our side! I mean those poets and painters, singers and musicians, novelists and playwrights who speak to the world in a way that is impervious to assault because they wage the battle for justice in a sphere which is unreachable by the dullness of ordinary political discourse.

We need to give artists a lot of free room to create.

If we pretend to respect the artist at all we must allow him his freedom of choice , in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify.

You're the artist - you make the music that you want to make.

There's a perception that if an artist produces another artist, they're going to imprint on them. But I'm the opposite.

There is a desperate tendency to try to legislate artists, to try to lay down rules for their obligations to society. Just leave artists alone. If you are a true artist, you will have a very finely tuned moral mechanism.

In so far as he is a creator, the artist does not belong to a social group already moulded by a culture, but to a culture which he is by way of building up.

With an artist no sane man quarrels, any more than with the colour of a child's eyes.

There's such a freedom about being an artist... You're not accountable - you're this renegade thing.

It is not the job of artists to give the audience what the audience want. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artist. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need

When you are an artist you can turn your hand to anything, in any style. Once you have the tools then all the artforms are the same in the end.

An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.

An artist must not feel under any constraint.

I've never been in the studio where it felt like I didn't have a voice. Whether I was co-producing or producing by myself, this community is the one place where I really see democracy at its purest.

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

The true artists is one who insists on producing a supply, whether or not there's any demand.