Artistic Constraint Quotes

I believe in limitations. I think the worst art ever made - in my opinion, because it's all so subjective - is where the artist had complete freedom.

Very few of my characters are based on people I've known. It is too constricting.

I have always been a singer/songwriter, and I was pushed in places I didn't want to do, like pop or top forty. I don't belong there.

I don't know if I've ever written a song that wasn't on assignment.

Count art by gold, and it fetters the feet it once winged.

It's hard to say this about a guy like Eddie Van Halen, one of the greatest guitar players who ever lived, but he's really limited to a style and they're locked into it.

I've always found the Write-What-You-Know axiom small and stifling.

I am incapable of directing a film like 'Agneenath.' I can do only what I am good at, so I would have been the worst choice to direct it. It has aggression, action and an inherent violence in it - things I am not capable of directing in my films.

I think it's a bit like saying a painter does a painting everyone loves and it's 40% blue paint, so from now on you have to paint paintings that are 40% blue. That's the film industry at its most blunt, which is why it's constantly bats and spiders and superheroes.

Fame doesn't redeem you. It takes a long time to get there, and when you're finally there, you realise you still have authority figures telling you what to do.

I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

A dancer, more than any other human being, dies two deaths: the first, the physical when the powerfully trained body will no longer respond as you would wish. After all, I choreographed for myself. I never choreographed what I could not do. I changed steps in Medea and other ballets to accommodate the change. But I knew. And it haunted me. I only wanted to dance.

I love to be able to tell a whole story in three-and-half minutes.

I've always been jealous of rappers, because they can fit so many words into a song and tell a story with lots of details. But when you're a songwriter, you have to fit the words to the melody and you can't fit as much in. I'm just a big fan of storytelling.

As an artist, program directors always want to put you in a little box.

All the big artists I talk to say that they are trapped in a formula and they are looking for the music of tomorrow.

Comedians have a tendency to have a limited range, they tend to do one thing and do it very well, but it's limited.

The important thing for me when I look at characters is to consider the kind of constraints placed upon them. Now, me personally, I don't like to have a lot of constraints placed upon me.

The greatest danger for artists is total freedom.

Sonnet is about movement in a form.

An artist is generally expected to stick to one motif, one persona. People get used to seeing someone put down a certain thing.

I don't think an artist should keep themselves categorized in a specific box.

I'm in the middle of my own 'Project Runway' challenge given to me by my daughter's preschool. All the parents have to make an outfit for their kids, for school pictures, made entirely out of recycled objects. I can not believe I have homework.

As long as the artist invents and is inspired, he remains in a constrained state of mind, at least for the purpose of communication. He then wants to say everything, which is the wrong tendency of young geniuses or the right prejudice of old bunglers. Thus, he fails to recognize the value and dignity of self-restraint, which is indeed for both the artist and the man the first and the last, the most necessary and the highest goal.