Poppy Quotes

As the generalization goes about the art industry, people can be really challenging and thought-provoking in their thinking and questioning the status quo, and it's really important that the status quo can be questioned and that there are people doing that.

That's the job of art: to undo the logic of the world.

I think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce somebody's face in a photograph. The magic is in seeing people in new ways.

Poetry is a beautiful way of expressing feelings - happy, sad, angry, caring. It's also a way that we share with other people, to help them with those feelings.

Even when I'm in quite a happy state of mind, I like writing really sad songs. I think a lot of people do.

I don't see that many movies lately that are actually about something, that are trying to challenge something about the way that people interact.

I sing my sorrow, and I paint my joy.

You can go to a play that is enjoyable because it's funny, and then on the next night you can go to a play that's enjoyable because it's 'disturbing.'

I think I'm always trying to subvert conventions, and sometimes it's more successful than others.

Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.

I think it's part of the responsibility of an artist to shock, to upset, to make people think differently, and to surprise people. And that's where the good humor is, if there's a surprise and there's something unexpected. Something that's not normal, not in the realm of general living expectations.

It's really important, whether you're a conservative or a liberal, to always challenge the conventional wisdom, which is what I've tried to do in all my work.

Correcting it, I don't know; just shedding the light of day on it is a first major step, being one of the earliest generations not to just accept the words.

I always feel that art in general and acting in particular should make the audience a little uncomfortable, to slap them and wake them up.

You have to sound sad first of all, then maybe later you can sound good.

Everyone finds my work super sad. I never do. I always find it uplifting in a weird way.

Influential people are never satisfied with the status quo. They're the ones who constantly ask, 'What if?' and 'Why not?' They're not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom, and they don't disrupt things for the sake of being disruptive; they do it to make things better.

As a songwriter I hate this whole, 'If it's a sad song, it has to sound like a sad song thing.' And that goes all the way back to my days with the Format. I'm an insane narcissist, so if I have to get something off my chest, I'll get something off my chest.

If I could be more vague I'd write more about people in my life, but I hate hurting feelings or making people feel uncomfortable. I've done that before. Unless they're sad songs. Those get finished fast, but the mean ones often end up at the back of the bottom drawer and it's probably for the best.

I want to be able to make people laugh and cry and feel happy or sad and feel all these different emotions through singing and acting. Hopefully throughout my career, I'll get to pursue them.

Art should walk a tightrope. That's what art should be. Art should be dangerous. You can't be scared to say something with it. People love to talk about how comics are real art and real literature, so why not use these characters to talk about real things, even if it is dangerous?

A lot of country music is sad. I think most art comes out of poverty and hard times. It applies to music. Three chords and the truth - that's what a country song is. There is a lot of heartache in the world.

I always go in very emotionally when I'm doing music. Sad or happy, I'm always into it. I have a hard time writing for other people, writing with someone else in mind.

Our religion is itself profoundly sad - a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man's own language - so long as he knows anguish and is a painter.

Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.