Taika Waititi Quotes

I'm in a very good place to make records. Needing to make money off music is very dangerous.

The only way you can continue to make artistic films is to make an occasional one of those. They kind of keep your marketability going to the extent that people will employ you.

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.

There was a point I could have just churned out the spot and spin paintings for ever and laughed all the way to the bank.

I am afraid to end up being in need to sell canvases - in other words, to be a society painter.

What is good for you creatively is usually bad commercially. You thrive financially by sticking to a series and not fiddling about too much. You do yourself harm by moving away from the series and the genre. By trying things not based in that particular mode of writing, you will just lose readers.

As an artist, you want to make good stories and create good art; as a businessman, you want to make money and make sure the investors are happy. The two will always clash, unfortunately.

I'm in an area where I want to make music that I'm thrilled with, but, you know, I do have to worry about putting food on the table. I'm in that position where I cannot always be gauging what things might become. I have to look ahead, because I'm cautious.

If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers.

The challenge artists face today is whether to be an underground, unheard genius, or to dilute their art for the marketplace.

It’s also true that I might have never made Taxi Driver [1976] were it not for the success of Alice [Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 1974]. The question of commercialism is a source of worry. Must one make a choice, must it be a matter of either setting your sights on winning an Academy Award and becoming a millionaire, or making only the movies you want to make and starving to death?

I would rather fall flat on my face than try to just make a quick dollar by making music that fits into the radio format right now. It does nothing for me.

In the music industry, we value large success. I realized that while I would like that, that it's not what my writing is about. And if I start making it about that, it becomes impure.

Jay-Z is as politically correct as some of the politicians. He's safe. There's points when you're acquiring financing, you make adjustments. He's made those adjustments. It's his choice. For me, it's not a necessity.

People think it's suspect and self-indulgent to make art, and I don't think that's true. Some people think you should be busy making something that you can sell in the marketplace, and if nobody wants to buy it, it must be crap. And that's not true.

I hope I'm in a position to make stuff that I really want to make as opposed to stuff that I just have to make for money reasons, or to sustain a certain marquee value.

The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.

If you were to hold me to a standard of, 'What are you doing, singing about a scratch-off ticket at your level of success?' then my music's gonna be ridiculous.

I suppose we'll make money off our album and our singles and stuff, but, like, they were made as we wanted them, exactly with what we had to say, and done exactly how we wanted them, right? And, like, we didn't put them out to make money. We put them out because we wanted to do them, do you know what I mean?

When I started off as an actor, the last thing I wanted to do in the world was make money. I was under the impression, when I started off as an actor, that the more money I made, the more it would diminish from my creativity and my capacity to be an artist.

I am all for high art but I owe it to myself to be clever about it and do commercial things too.

Obviously, I would like to play to bigger audiences and have a bit more success, but not if I have to commercialize.

An artiste can only be happy when he is true to his art.

Art should be able to be innovative without compromising itself. That's why I believe artists should have bigger preoccupations than checking the price tags on their work or becoming curators' darlings.

I don't want to be trending. Instead of pursuing ideas of being more radio-friendly and... commercial, I want to go harder at being more creative.