Writing a film is like building a brick wall. You have a plan, and you have the blocks. Then, somebody says, 'I think we'll take this stone out of here and put it over there. And while we're at it, let's make this stone red and that stone green.'
I hate that sense of entitlement or the sense of business crawling into playing music.
There is no purity with regards to the marketplace and art, I believe.
You can't do gospel and rap. Either you're of the gospel music, or you're a rapper. You can't put the two together. You can, but is it right? It's questionable.
I don't want to be a small-time, independent, successful rapper.
Directors don't always create, they can also destroy with too many demands.
If you start adapting to audiences, you're really second-guessing the situation, and it becomes a bit more like cabaret.
When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed.
When you record an album in six days, you don't have time to work out a lot of stuff.
I forget who said it, but there's that saying: 'Films are never finished, they're abandoned.' There's always something you think you can improve on, but I don't think you should try. George Lucas started doing it, and didn't stop. You can tinker indefinitely, and it doesn't necessarily make it better.
The best thing commercially, which is the worst artistically, by and large, is the most successful.
I've done millions of mediocre movies. I've done way more than my fair share. You do what you gotta do. This is not heart surgery. I'm not curing cancer. I'm just trying to put my kids through school.
The music business is a crazy game, especially for somebody like me who is really a purist about the art. Trying to balance the pressures of commercialism, it's a tightrope. It's a fine line between sticking to your guns and insanity.
All the arts, to varying degrees, involve some kind of a compromise. This being so, how far need the radio dramatist go to meet the public without losing sight of himself and his own standards of value?
When I was at Capitol - and this was not Capitol's fault - I was aiming, you know. I would listen to country radio and go, 'What version of me does radio want?'
We never said we were hard-core or that we didn't want our music crossing over or being popular.
If a poet would influence politics he must join a party, and then he is lost as a poet: goodbye to his free spirit and his open mind.
In my career, I've never been a box office name. Granted, a couple of my movies have made a lot of money, but I'd do other movies which make very little money, or they're not seen that much.
The American white man (not to speak of the Indian, the Negro, the Mexican) hasn't a ghost of a chance. If he has any talent he's doomed to have it crushed one way or another. The American way is to seduce a man by bribery and make a prostitute of him. Or else to ignore him, starve him into submission and make a hack of him.
Film-makers should remain true to their principles and never compromise, there is a real revival in the British film industry but there is a danger that we will become colonial servants of Hollywood. We need to maintain our own integrity.
In the '70s, the newspaper guild managed to get people paid what they were worth, but the reporters suddenly became middle class. It's much more respectable, more uptight, and everyone speaks in guarded tones. And the writing isn't as good. We always had guys who were failed poets and failed novelists who did it to eat.
Celebrity is death - celebrity - that's the worst thing that can happen to an actor.
I could do Rust In Peace again, but I don't want to. I could have followed that formula but, God, why? I would have to have done so much heroin and cocaine - and I wasn't going to. Not if I'm paying for it!
I tried to play anything people would hire me to play, because I was a musician.
Every time the industry gets powerful, and corporate thinking dominates what the music is, then the music really pales.
