It's tricky to ask a filmmaker to explain his own work; usually we're the least qualified to make sense of what we've done, unfortunately, because of the tunnel vision required to create anything over four years.
I think the pairing of your material practice with your subject is something that is the constant concern of every artist for time immemorial.
I figure as an artist the best thing you can do is follow your heart - and if your heart is marketable, then you win.
Chet loved artists. He did. But he was caught up in the system. He had two hats. He had to have 'em because he did two things: he was an artist, and he was an executive.
I do a film because I would love to be a part of it, but I also think from the audience's perspective. Our profession survives because of our audience.
If you're an artist, the problem is to make a picture work whether you are happy or not.
I get paid all day, every day, which is almost too much for a sensitive artist.
The downside of being a celebrity is that people kind of know about you, and you really don't need them to know about you - you need them to know about your work.
The most difficult thing for me as an artist, as a creator of music, is lyrics. But everything else, I just do it.
When I go to see people, I always kind of hope they are going to play some kind of songs I know. So you've got to know your audience. It's kind of something that is a blessing and a curse in a way. You're obligated to play some of that stuff that people know, but I don't think that's all you have to do.
Painting is no problem. The problem is what to do when you're not painting.
I am so anti-people's opinions when I'm making a record, but when it's finished and I put it out there, I hope somebody likes it.
After 'Real Live Woman,' I wasn't sure I'd ever want to make another record.
Most people, from their second album on, find it much harder to be as spontaneously creative as they were with their first couple of records, and some people only have one thing that they do.
Everyone gets that second album syndrome.
I think inside every rock journalist, there's somebody who wishes they had the courage to live the life that they're not, and that they're writing about. But at the same time, inside every songwriter, I guess there's a wish for happiness.
The fate of the architect is the strangest of all. How often he expends his whole soul, his whole heart and passion, to produce buildings into which he himself may never enter.
I didn't really sign up to be a celebrity, I only signed up to be a writer.
I follow a simple formula when I compose. I ask myself, 'What would the audience want to hear?' and 'Why would they buy my CDs?' And the process of answering these questions through music follows. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it backfires.
An artist must either give up art or develop.
We travel so much as touring musicians and artists that sometimes, when you hear a great song that you really think could be on your project, you go ahead and record it instead of try to write it.
I just couldn't get anyone to sing my songs, so I had to sing my own tunes.
I mean I appreciate fan mail and that the people like what I am doing but I can't answer it. If I would answer 25 letters a day I would be just a guy answering mail and not an artist anymore.
The truth is, anyone who puts so much of herself and her life into art as you do must naturally fear any failure in that art as a potential threat to your life. And so you protect your art more than you protect your health or the common forms of happiness the rest of us have. And you probably have this in common with every artist you admire.
I think I may drop dead on the stage someday. I hate to think of it. But it's getting tough on me, the travel. The show, I somehow manage to rise up to it, you know. But I have no desire to retire.
