Raf Simons Quotes

The thing about being on the majors, from the beginning, going into this, I was like, "I'm not going to be treated like a factory," because that's never the way it was done before. You're talking about a major label, we're talking about serious business; you're not an artist anymore, you're a business, you have to work in terms of product, you have to release a product, and I don't really think that way at all.

Anyone who thinks Peter Jackson would fall for market forces around him rather than artistic integrity doesn't know the guy or the body of his work.

When I did TV shows and my other movies, I never try to do it for anybody. I just do what I think is good no matter what the genre is.

I invest because I'm really a firm believer in letting the artist make their work, if you choose to work with an artist then you give them the go-ahead.

Hopefully this is going to be a trend, the beginning of a movement to reclaim theater for the artist and not commerce. I think there's a level of fatigue. Artists are tired of having to create work that's then coopted by commercial demands. When you begin souping up the car, the car no longer feels like your own.

I'm back in fashion again for a while now. But I imagine that three or four years from now I'll be out again. And in another fifteen years I'll be back. If you try to write to stay in fashion, if you try to write to be the critics' darling, you become an employee.

I have a feeling that art is something you do for yourself, and that any time you turn your decisions over to someone else you're postponing at best, your own development. The atmosphere of the workshop should be that of trying out one's own work and accepting the signals from others but not accepting the dictation of others because that is a violation of the spirit of art. Art can't be done by somebody else, it has got to be done by the artist.

It's a pretty great thing to have a record that at the end of the day you're not totally sick of and you're actually proud of. We're pretty lucky, because a lot of bands come out with their first record on a label and they're forced to make decisions they might not stand behind because someone's telling them it's a good idea. We didn't have to do that. I think that's one of the things I'm most thankful for.

I think it's harder to make a classic now, not because of what people say, but because artists now are so concerned with what people say.

It's so easy to get into the same routine. A novel every two years; perhaps, improving technique. But I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in doing something fundamentally important--and therefore, it needs time. And what I've been doing, really, is avoiding this pressure to get into the habit of one novel a year. This is what is expected of novelists. And I have never been really too much concerned with doing what is expected of novelists, or writers, or artists. I want to do what I believe is important.

The artist's duty to himself is a combination of immense responsibility and immense irresponsibility. I think those two interlock.

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.

Art is a severe business; most serious when employed in grand and sacred objects. The artist stands higher than art, higher than the object. He uses art for his purposes, and deals with the object after his own fashion.

I think the biggest thing that people fear when it comes to art becoming a business is those authentic, pure aspirations of art being compromised.

For an artist to think in terms of success is like a priest trying to think in terms of success.

The awesome thing about being an artist? You can't be fired from your own mind.

My greatest accomplishment is the freedom for doing what I want to do with my music...I love my freedom so I'm happy I am a free artist.

At Pixar, I don't have to compromise at all. When I look at the finished "Toy Story 3," I don't sit and constantly think, oh, the actor was having a bad day, or oh, it rained and we couldn't use that set. The story that I wanted to tell is what is on screen, and I haven't had to compromise it one iota.

Its very important to me to be respected by true talented artists and great minds than by the masses who need to be told how to think. Its more important for me to do things that are spiritually rewarding because that wealth is what makes me feel alive. I do not touch projects that do not yield personal fulfillment, or put me in a field with talent that is over-measured. You wont find me where there is no Truth. And Im not one to jump on any bandwagons or join a gold rush without a purpose. Id rather create my own projects and grow my own fields.

All you can do as an artist is do what you think is an extension of you. You put down on paper ... who you are. That's what being an artist is all about. And when it gets done, you don't look back at it and say, Oh, I could have done that better.

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.

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

I came in as an established artist. People were hiring me for what I did and for who I was. I think that has given me a vast amount of leeway; I feel so lucky that I came in that way.

It is not the being paid money in advance that jars the sensitive artist: it is the having to work.

Part of the blame can be put at the artists' door, too - no question. But I see our involvement more as a consequence. When there is too much money at stake, the whole system gets corrupted. Artists can be very vulnerable to these mechanisms.