Artistic Expectation Quotes

You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.

I never expected to sell my art. It wasn't like today where you come out of art school and they promise you a future. Now it's almost regulated in a way. When we came out of school, we just wanted to make art that'd blow your hair back and do it for sport. There was no commercial possibility that we saw.

I mark a script like an exam, and I try not to do anything under 50 per cent. Similarly with the part. And also film is a peculiar thing, parts don't necessarily read in script form anything like as well as they can do when it comes to materialising.

While a large segment of the art world has obsessed over a tiny number of stars and their prices, an aesthetic shift has been occurring. It's not a movement - movements are more sure of themselves. It's a change of mood or expectation, a desire for art to be more than showy effects, big numbers, and gamesmanship.

Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art. And after that, the whip came down.

As soon as they say I don't sound as good as my old stuff, I tell them, "I would never sound as good as I first sounded, because you guys didn't know who I was. Being that I'm in rotation, you guys are getting used to the sound, so now you expect another track and another track, but it never happens again, no matter how hard I try."

If you're only making an album every 10 years, it better be good.

To make a movie is very stressful, especially when you work with your father. You want to think the movie is good. Even when I don't work with my father, I want it to be good.

When you have a reputation for making not only good songs but great albums, that in itself creates added artistic pressure. But, at the end of the day, I guess that pressure is something I welcome.

Sometimes people stop me on the street and they say 'when are you going to make the next 'Zanaka' and it's what I really didn't want to do.

I was constantly being pushed toward a European ideal of what it means to be a classical or opera singer, let's say in the Renata Tebaldi mode. I reject that.

The secret of being a writer: not to expect others to value what you've done as you value it. Not to expect anyone else to perceive in it the emotions you have invested in it. Once this is understood, all will be well.

Ambiguity around ambiguity is forgivable in an unpublished poet and expected of an arts student on the pull: for a professional comedian demoting himself to the role of 'thinker', with stadiums full of young people hanging on his every word, it won't really do.

A moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art. The promise of it is felt in the act of creation but disappears towards the completion of the work. For it is then the painter realises that it is only a picture he is painting. Until then he had almost dared to hope the picture might spring to life.

I've never made a record that didn't sound better than what was in my head - that's sort of my rule.

Make every song is your best song to date.

I hate that if you do one style of music or become really well known for that one song, that everything that comes after has to fit that mold.

All artists today are expected to cultivate a little fashionable unhappiness.

Everybody I know is writing plays twice a year. It's sort of making me feel I am not up to much.

I'm quite taken aback when I get something that appears to be technically a good photograph, because it's not necessarily my intention.

I hear a lot of people saying my stuff sounds the same. When you're in my position, people come to you to give them the same sound in a different type of way.

I have been doing music all my life so everyday when I get up I expect music will be part of it.

Some people don't listen to my music because they say that I am an artist. And some don't want to go to my gallery shows, because they say I am a musician.

Many people think of me as a perfectionist, someone who polishes and shines each song and performance. I've always been bothered by that assumption.