Arthur Miller Quotes

If you go to Hollywood, you've already sold out.

The world is so caught up in the 'American Idol' idealistic sort of tendency in regards to just thinking that this whole thing is what everybody wants, but it doesn't help you make a better record.

It can be disheartening to see acts that don't necessarily have any input on their own material to do so well in the charts.

As soon as any art is pursued with a view of money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work.

It's not always about huge giant commercial success. It's about art.

Art is all about becoming a name, a brand; it isn't based on talent or creativity.

The ugliest spectacle is that of artists selling themselves. Art as a commodity is an ugly idea... The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist.

The consequence of making it a business thing and making an artist the same as a Wall Street trader is that you do get a robot by the end of it. It becomes more robotic as opposed to being more soulful.

I'm not criticizing Hollywood because I work there, I partly live there. But I'm saying this is the way it is, commerce is taking over art. Commerce has become the most important thing in the film industry. Hollywood is an industry, it's not an art form, therefore they have to address the bottom line. But in a way it's sad when you get a remake, isn't it?

If you want to make money, that's great, but if you make great music, you're going to make money anyway. Keep your eyes on making a great product. You don't even have to promote it.

When you're young and idealistic, you don't care: you'll play to no one, in your bedroom - like kids with football - you'll play anywhere; you just love the music. And then, bang - soon as you're in the industry, you think that's the dream. But that's when the dream starts to end.

I've always said it's easier for bands to make a hard stance - like, we don't do commercials or whatever, blah blah blah - when you've sold billions of records. It's super-easy to be righteous when you're rich.

That's the nature of the business. You can have a hit and then nothing happens all of a sudden. But I don't resent it. Hits don't make great artists.

I don't want people to talk about how old I am; I want them to talk about what I'm making.

The inventors we remember didn't invent anything. They're the people who took somebody else's invention and made it commercially viable.

I do think there's a difference when you see a book where you can tell the creator's doing something they really love or are really passionate about as opposed to an artist or a writer who is just doing a particular job or trying to sell a product or trying to cash in on a popular trend.

If you don't put out material that's going to last, you're not going to last.

I really don't believe in the word 'selling out.'

I have been skeptical, sometimes, about the importance of rap music, which I think is a capitalistic project to make money.

People will watch your film only if it's good. Another star's flop won't make your film a hit. So my race is with myself.

It's dollars before art in Hollywood.

I think there is something to be said for churning things out. Motown churned out hits and there is nothing wrong with that.

People are buying my life when they're buying those records. I hate to sound bigheaded or something, but that's the reality of it. Suddenly, everything you've been doing means something.

Not to name names, but a lot of pop female artists you see, they don't write their own songs. Lot of top male artists and boy band artists, they don't write their own songs. They're just a product. They sell, they sell, they sell. They don't care about musical integrity, any of that kind of stuff.

I simply loathe the crude 1960s distinctions between commerce and art. For me, Warhol and pop obliterated all of those separations - that was the whole point of the Brillo Boxes and Campbell's Soup Cans. And believe it or not, in 2009, moronic journalists are still saying to me, 'Your work is so commercial.'