Robert Crumb Quotes

Nobody owns me or my music.

Certainly in cartooning I'm given huge free rein at the moment.

That is the true joy of being a solo artist. I can do whatever I want. I can go wherever I want. I can show up with my guitar and my song, and it can sound a hundred different ways. That's the freedom of being on your own. The flipside is: That's you on the cover. If it sucks, it's your fault.

I think that, with anything creative, you should have the freedom to experiment, and that experimentation means not feeling totally responsible for how other people perceive it.

The best times I had on film sets were the times the director let me express myself, but those were rare.

The only place where any artist feels liberated is doing independent music. I have had great experience making music for The Dewarists and Coke Studio. No actor, producer or label is telling me what to do with my music. I'm the boss. It is my life, my expression.

The beautiful thing about being independent and having my own label is I can say whatever the hell I want.

When you make music on your own for so long, you get used to just doing whatever you want.

The genius must have his freedom and his independence.

as a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude, your loneliness. You are in the country where you make up the rules, the laws. You are both dictator and obedient populace. It is a country nobody has ever explored before. It is up to you to make the maps, to build the cities. Nobody else in the world can do it, or ever could do it, or ever will be able to do it again.

I work so I don't need to make rent through my songs, and I think if more people engaged with music without needing it to provide for their welfare, you're not beholden to anyone.

Weezer isn't stuck in roles, so we just do what we want to do, what makes us excited.

What I discovered in Berlin was this immense freedom because it felt like you could start any kind of project and nobody would care... and that's what I sort of adopted to my own.

To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. It's freedom.

I don't care what other people think any more about me writing my own parts.

The way I look at a solo project is, I create what I want with whoever I want.

In climbing, sponsors typically support an athlete but provide very little direction, giving the climber free rein to follow his or her passion toward whatever is inspiring. It's a wonderful freedom, in many ways similar to that of an artist who simply lives his life and creates whatever moves him.

My art side is free and there are no strings attached.

The best part about stand-up is that you control everything. Period. When you work in movies, or on TV shows, there are 50 other people involved.

I'm not in a certain type of genre, and I can't be categorized or pigeonholed. That leaves a wide range of what I can do for myself, for other people, and with other people.

Creative freedom is a huge carrot.

People say I've gone against Hollywood, but I've tried to be independent within Hollywood, tried to be my own person.

You're not a slave to those test audiences.

I sort of jumped out of movies and into the lifeboat of comics. I loved it right away. It was the opposite of film school. Whatever was in my imagination could end up in the finished product. There were just no limitations.

As a writer, it's important to stay true to your story without giving a hoot about publishers, critics and readers. You should do your karma as an author the way you want to, and rest is up to God.