Saul Williams Quotes

I feel more Irish than English. I feel freer than British, more visceral, with a love of language. Shot through with fire in some way. That's why I resist being appropriated as the current repository of Shakespeare on the planet. That would mean I'm part of the English cultural elite, and I am utterly ill-fitted to be.

I hate the idea that I have to represent any particular section of society; I just write good telly, that's all.

In minority communities there's a sensitivity, often a knee-jerk reaction, to critical representations. There's a misunderstanding of what an artist does.

In my estimation, the only thing that is more to be guarded against than bad taste is good taste.

Am I R&B because I'm black? Am I pop because I have a song called 'Milkshake'? Or can I just be who the hell I am? Good Lord, people make it seem like we're doing heart transplants here, but we're just making music!

As actors, we are so privileged to do what we do and to give to the world and to choose the subject we want to say to the world.

Imagine if someone like John Lennon or Bob Marley, Sid Vicious, Picasso, whomever, were doing their work, and some corporation, some CEO, some branding entity was saying to you, 'Well, you can do that, but you've got to remove this aspect of your work.' There would no longer be that purity anymore.

I will never be a fan of any kind of political correctness: I think it's instant death to creativity.

It's different, it's weird to say, 'She's a white rapper or she can't do this because she's this color - this color does this thing. These are the boxes we have, this is what it is, don't try to change it.' And it's crazy to me because I'm just not from that world, so I can't really rock with it all the way.

I joke that a person of color would never make a movie like 'Midnight in Paris.' Nostalgia isn't so enticing.

I think every artist should follow their vision, their hearts is what they need to reveal, not something that society is looking out for.

All art is exploitation.

I don't buy into the idea that an Irish writer should write about Ireland, or a gay writer should write about being gay.

Most of the best music in American history was made by people with no options.

I think it's a mistake where rap music is these days. It doesn't seem to be able to look out of the ghetto and that's ultimately unfortunate, because it defines our limitations.

Real art has been... what's the word? Kidnapped? No, that's not it. But, OK, kidnapped by business.

There's been moments where I've felt, as an indigenous woman growing up in Australia, there's been that kind of rivalry of being indigenous... I've had that experience of someone saying, 'I don't know if she's going to go that far.'

In my experience, as a young black artist, you have to fulfill an archetype, or be a token - and I was unwilling to do that.

I'm always thinking about what a black lady would think about what I'm doing, just because I feel like they have such great taste, mostly because as black women, we've spent a lot of time downloading what a white male narrative is, so in my head, I'm like, 'If a black woman likes it, if she responds to it, then it's probably pretty damn great.'

Everything's so commercialised it shuts down the underground.

I really didn't want to be boxed into becoming a certain kind of film-maker - becoming the Maori story film-maker because I had made those short films.

To think about love and passion and political correctness all together, it doesn't work. Art has to go way past the political to be effective.

I hope I will always have the ability to create art and live in a world where I can speak freely, and I can inspire people. I don't know what form that will take.

I think '60s are appealing to creative people, because it seemed to be a time of endless possibilities, when the boundaries of what could be considered popular culture were being expanded almost by the week. It doesn't feel like that anymore. At times, I wish it were so. Radio is a perfect example; good God, I mean, back then the most interesting songs were also hits, and that's just not true anymore. It hasn't been true in a long time.

I recognize limitations in the sense that I've read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and Shakespeare . . . Aside from that I don't think of limiting myself.