Artistic Betrayal Quotes

Doing interviews about my films really bothers me sometimes, because I have to speak directly and clearly about things I've intended to keep ambiguous, and in a way, I feel like I'm betraying my film.

As a writer, I have learned that each time I pick up my pencil I betray someone.

Hollywood, to hear some writers tell it, is the place where they take an author's steak tartare and make cheeseburger out of it. Upon seeing the film, they say, the author promptly cuts his throat, bleeding to death in a pool of money.

I hate performers who debase great works of art; I long for their annihilation.

It's frightening for one artist to see another one, any other one turn away from art.

I think in a lot of situations I had got songs stolen from me, or treated badly.

I have made a solemn vow never to send my drawings because people have cheated me. In particular, just today I found... that, having done a drawing of souls in Purgatory for the Bishop of St. Gata, he, in order to spend less, commissioned another painter to do the painting using my work. If I were a man, I can't imagine it would have turned out this way.

When an artist deserts to the side of the angels, it is the most odious of treasons.

See, you can't rewrite, 'cause to rewrite is to deceive and lie, and you betray your own thoughts. To rethink the flow and the rhythm, the tumbling out of the words, is a betrayal, and it's a sin, Martin, it's a sin." --Hank (Kerouac)to Martin (Ginsberg) in the film Naked Lunch

I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests.

When the art world is done wrong, a reader's faith is lost and possibly not recuperable.

When "Search and Destroy" by the Stooges came on as a Nike shoe commercial, I got physically sick. That song meant the world to me, and I didn't feel this was the way it ought to be used.

I am a passionate, committed composer, and the guy I used to write musicals with, once he was able to ditch me and get a better composer, actually won the Tony.

There are so many intellectual and moral angels battling for rationalism, good citizenship, and pure spirituality; so many and such eminent ones, so very vocal and authoritative! The poor devil in man needs all the support and advocacy he can get. The artist is his natural champion. When an artist deserts to the side of the angels, it is the most odious of treasons.