Dan Rather Quotes

You can't make your choices based on what critics think. You have to make your choices based on what's honest for you.

Once you decide that it is the art that is important and not how popular and well received you are, you no longer have an albatross.

Sometimes you can't really control the language around you. All you can do is follow your voice and your path - dedicate yourself to stories that matter.

My work is trying to at least define myself on my own terms, and then if other people enjoy things that's a lovely addition.

Everyone always comes to one point in their life as an artist where you can either let your heart guide you or your ego.

I'm just excited that I get to put out the music I love versus music just for the sake of it.

My greatest achievement is being able to write records that are real snapshots of what's going on in my life. I won't repeat myself for the sake of commerce, or to please other people.

Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response.

I think the key to making records generally is to make 'em for yourself, regardless of the climate in the business.

I've heard some people say that I'm selling out, but I'm not. If I hadn't done 'Black Radio', and just kept on doing just piano trio stuff, I wouldn't be honest with myself; I'd be doing it to please other people. That would be selling out.

I have always tried to work according to what affects me, to a script that I like because it touches me in some way, without deliberately pursuing a commercial career or a particular image.

I could never sit down and say: I'm going to do an out-and-out comedy, just to prove to people I can. You've just got to do what you do. Just listen to your soul and do your art and do it for the right reasons, and then you can't fail.

I've found that in now having experienced what it's like to make records and just through growing up in general that you should be expressive about what's affecting you instead of trying to sing about a subject just for the sake of other people getting something from it.

I have to live authentically at all times. And that's part of what makes me an artist. I'm not scared to do that.

You want to feel that you can do something creative that you love without being picked apart and mutilated for other people's pleasure.

Books are not brands. Some people are very willing to see themselves as a brand, but you can't be a certain type of writer to a certain type of person all the time. It will kill you.

If you start to just aim for what the audience wants to hear, you're already hamstrung because you don't have any freedom.

I've never been one to sit back and go, 'I'd better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don't want to lose them.'

This is not Tolstoy. I don't want to know what critics and professors think of what I'm writing. It might hurt my feelings.

I try to just make music that I love, and if I believe in it that's all that matters.

I left because I could no longer make records that sounded less and less like me. I tried to please people instead of believing in my own strength, until the only thing I could do was walk away.

You know, we have our own audience, and it's not like - they just know we're not going to do certain things.

I'm sick of being self-referential. I don't want to do any more songs that can be accused of being personal.

You can't worry too much about profile; otherwise, you become a different kind of actor, and that's not the kind of actor I want to be.

There was a time, early on in my career, when it was very important for me to be liked by everyone. It meant that I was musically less honest with myself.