Artistic Priorities Quotes

When I do have time to work on music, I'm kind of selfish, and would rather work on my own stuff than someone else's.

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

I'm constantly fighting with my manager to reduce the amount of time I have to spend on promotional activities, so I can get back in the studio and work on new music.

When it comes to art, money is an unimportant detail. It just happens to be a huge unimportant detail.

I love being able to work with other artists I admire, but I have a lot to do on my own before I am willing to make it all about embracing other people.

What could be said about me...a man to whom only his painting matters? And of course his garden and his flowers as well.

I believe artists are too focused on the younger crowd. Why would you want to focus on them? Let them do what they do. You continue to do what you do.

I've turned down a lot of roles to make time to record and tour.

I feel like I've reached a point where music has become just as much a priority to me as my acting, and I'm glad to feel that way.

I don't really care about audio quality. If people saw some of the ways that I record stuff, they'd see I don't care in that respect. I obviously care about things sounding good, but I think quality exists through other things like emotionally connecting with a lyric or a feeling, or whatever.

All the stuff that I used to treat with contempt - you know, I'm an artist, man, I don't do that family stuff - has begun to seem really important.

I directed three films and each time [I act] I hope it's the last time so I have time to do my film [directing].

The best artists are people who don't consider themselves artists, and the people who do are usually the most pretentious and annoying. They've got their priorities wrong. They're just doing it to be artists rather than because they want to do it.

It's strange. No one ever really talked to me about my voice. People started writing about it, and I was like, 'What?' I'm really about my lyrics, but more people were talking about my voice. It's cool, but at first I got upset because I wanted people to focus on the content.

I think my melodies are superior to my lyrics.

I can’t worry too much about the everyday things. Otherwise I’d lose touch with my own world, that helps me as an artist, but it’s frustrating for the people around me. I’m vaguely functional, but there’s always something slightly off.

I liked 'Rumours,' but to me, there was some point where the focus became the sales, not the music.

I got more bands and went on the road and turn down more movies than you would believe.

I'd rather be known as a songwriter than a guitarist, although I love to play the guitar.

I feel like too many horror writers and filmmakers sort of just assume that the default is, 'The horror movie must be all atmosphere first and everything else second.'

If only a group of people were more important to me than the idea of a Novel, I might begin a novel.

Artists have kids, mortgages, or drug habits, and they got to do what they got to do. But reforming and the reunion stuff isn't me. I'm a 'moving forward' person.

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.

I really wish people - maybe it's naive - wish people had priorities and were willing to be artistic patrons.

Politics will take care of itself. I'm interested in people who are involved in the situations that politicians create. Politics is taken care of by politicians - they're not filmmakers.