Aziz Ansari Quotes

In one respect, I like the freedom of using all the people that I love instead of being dictated by the studio to use the hot person of the moment.

Actors, you have to wait for people to give you work, or you have to make your own stuff. But standup, I could just say, 'I want to do standup in 30 minutes,' and I can go do standup. Or I could just say, 'I want to do standup in a few weeks in this city.'

I try to just make what I want to make or what I would want to see. I try not to think about the audience too much.

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 whole thing with comedy is that you are always in control. Writer, director, actor, producer, and sometimes bouncer. And you are just a piece of their puzzle.

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 love independent films, it's the only place as an actor you're totally allowed to breathe.

I didn't feel compromised as an actor, and allowed other people's fingerprints all over that aspect.

I don't think about the styles. I write whatever comes out and I use whatever kind of instrumentation works for those songs.

And yes, there's a simplicity to writing books because you're not a member of a team, so you make all the decisions yourself instead of deferring to a committee.

When no one knows you, and you're just trying to break into stuff, it's so good because you can write whatever you want and just say it; it's just between you and the audience. There's no process or worrying about anyone else interfering with what you're doing.

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

I don't dictate the solos and I don't dictate the vocal harmonies.

I love doing stand-up. It's so self-contained - you go there, you do it, you go home - but with telly, there are too many people involved with it with opinions. You have a product, and everyone wants to change it.

I've made a few albums in such an autonomous way; it often has been exhausting. It's almost difficult to enjoy the process when you take on so much.

I have achieved what I wanted to achieve. I'm better off at some sort of independent place where they not only like what I produce but also trust me to be the one to produce it.

Putting out commercial pieces and promoting them and trying to sell them to people is not necessarily what it means to be an artist.

I've been very lucky in the freedom that I've been given. Every artist needs two types of freedom: You need the freedom to - the freedom to come up with an idea or treatment - and then you need the other half of the freedom, and that's freedom from - somebody saying, 'This is great. This is how I want you to do it.'

I think that was the whole idea behind doing the solo record was to be able to do musically whatever I wanted to do.

When you give an artist a canvas, you shouldn't tell him exactly how much paint to put on it, or exactly how sharp the images should be. You should let the artist get going.

I kinda like the idea of having an album that's all me.

There's something to be said for being given a tremendous amount of freedom as an actor.

Someone who is an artist can say, 'I can create and can make what I create disappear.'

I think everybody goes off and does their own vision. And I don't take responsibility for other people's work, frankly. It's bad enough taking responsibility for my own.

When you're a stand-up comic, you live and die by what you say on stage. There's no director or writer or producer who can tell you what to say and not to say. Once in a while, a club owner will ask a comic to work clean, or not say something, but that's few and far between.