Artistic Debt Quotes

Music owes as much to Bach as religion to its founder.

Without Elvis none of us could have made it.

Shakespeare's always been sitting on my back, since I began reading. And, certainly, as a writer, he's who I hear all the time. And he's almost indistinguishable now from the English language. I have no sense of what Shakespeare is like. I have no sense of the personality that is Shakespeare. I think, alone among writers, I don't know who he is.

The world concerns me only in so far as I have a certain debt and duty to it, because I have lived in it for thirty years and owe to it to leave behind some souvenir in the shape of drawings and paintings – not done to please any particular movement, but within which a genuine human sentiment is expressed.

As an artist, I feel so fortunate to be able to learn from all these great musicians that came before me, when some people have nobody that came before them.

I owe so much to Shakespeare. Nothing is more humbling and more exhilarating than taking ahold of those sacred words and riding them like a wave.

I think one of the greatest compliments I've ever received was when a young kid came backstage at Joe's Pub, when I had the "Bronx In Blue" album out. He said, "What Jimmy Reed did for you, you do for me."

Look at the history of literature, and you find the history of beauty on the one hand and the IOUs on the other.

We've all been influenced by other people...If Minnie Riperton never existed, would I have even thought of singing in that (upper) register? I doubt it.

What Muddy Waters did for us is what we should do for others. It's the old thing, what you want written on your tombstone as a musician: 'He passed it on.'

I was a playwright who was still learning the ropes when Starz took a chance on me to create and showrun 'Vida.' They nurtured and supported me during every step of the strenuous process, and that is a debt that cannot be repaid.

Any creator owes a debt to past creation.

In my opinion painters owe to Giotto, the Florentine painter, exactly the same debt they owe to nature, which constantly serves them as a model and whose finest and most beautiful aspects they are always striving to imitate and reproduce.

I do know there's a lot of music where Led Zeppelin has been leant on. We didn't do anything about it. And I wouldn't want to, either.

Let me put it this way: if 'The Godfather' hadn't been made, 'Sarkaar' wouldn't have been made. That is the truth.

I have no illusions about my art. I am what the public made me and, consequently, I am not likely to forget my debt to them.

I do see myself as the heir to a vast, great, rich culture of painting - of art in general - which we have lost, but which places obligations on us.

How much the work of an artist owes to an art movement to which he belongs can never be determined exactly, if only because the movement derives its character from the individual creations of its members.

Without Mac Miller, there would be no GoldLink.

That I make poetry and give pleasure - if I give pleasure - are because of you.

I wouldn't be here without Girls' Generation. If there were no Girls' Generation, there would be no me.

In 1965, when great young white artists in the English-speaking world were successfully re-channeling hillbilly and black music - you know Bob Dylan, Ray Davies, Pete Townsend, Keith Richards - they didn't get any money at first. They were all broke.

There would not be Skaters or Emeralds or any of these bands if it weren't for Double Leopards.

Is there not some place within your gift where I can earn a decent support for myself, my wife, and child? I have not heard of a single author, not even a small one like myself, who has been placed under obligation to the Republican party. And yet I think the Republican party is under some obligation to us authors.

It's not about battling the original artists when I record these songs, it's about paying tribute to them.