Creative Authenticity Quotes

All I can do is focus on staying true to the style of music I write and sing because that is the only way it's going to come off as honest.

I always try to be the Madonna of wrestling in that she always changed her look and her style, but she always stayed true to herself as an artist. That's the best way to have longevity in this business, for sure.

I saw that my best work was my most personal work, which is odd, because my fiction is very far afield and has nothing to do with my life.

Maybe there's a different story when it comes to hip-hop or different genres, but as far as rock music goes, I think there is a sort of fear of saying things people might be apt to criticize. Our band is the opposite of that.

Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what's wrong, because they'll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony's gone from liberating to enslaving. ... The postmodern founders' patricidal work was great, but patricide produces orphans, and no amount of revelry can make up for the fact that writers my age have been literary orphans throughout our formative years.

I paint what I see and not what others like to see.

I just want to be an artist that makes exactly what he feels.

Art has to be a kind of confession. I don't mean a true confession in the sense of that dreary magazine. The effort it seems to me, is: if you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover them, too - the terms with which they are connected to other people.

An artist should remain true. Otherwise his talent, like his stomach, grows fat and stuffy.

I wouldn't use a song I didn't think was my brand or image.

I think the key for any kind of artist - and this transcends music - is a certain degree of authenticity and sincerity.

There's a difference between a pop star and an artist. Pop stars have to be perfect all the time; an artist is allowed, on occasion, to suck. And I put myself in that category because I sometimes suck. I'm not trying to please the masses. It's not going to happen, so I don't try.

There’s no “correct path” to becoming a real artist. You might think you’ll gain legitimacy by going to university, getting published, getting signed to a record label. But it’s all bullshit, and it’s all in your head. You’re an artist when you say you are. And you’re a good artist when you make somebody else experience or feel something deep or unexpected.

Artistic inevitability lies in the complete adequacy of the external to the emotion.

In art there is a need for truth, not sincerity.

I'm not just painting for painting's sake. I want to be truthful.

I have moments of darkness, of anger, and moments of rage. They do creep up at the most inopportune times. Not to recognize that in my music would give people a sense of sainthood that I don't necessarily have or even want to have.

You should really stay true to your own style. When I first started writing, everybody said to me, 'Your style just isn't right because you don't use the really flowery language that romances have.' My romances - compared to what's out there - are very strange, very odd, very different. And I think that's one of the reasons they're selling.

I think perhaps I've learned to be myself. I have a theory that all artists who would be important - painters and writers - must learn to be themselves. It takes a very long time.

I need to let people know who I am and instead of just trying to make great records, just be honest and make it more personal and make it more passionate, to make records with emotion and not be afraid to express that.

I know as a consumer I want a story. I want a defining - I don't want just an album full of singles. I want to get to know the artist beyond what everyone else can hear on the radio.

I just think I want my work to represent me fully.

As an artist, as an actor, as a writer, you have to use what's personal to you. You have to be personal about your work; otherwise, it doesn't ring true.

In our day the conventional element in literature is elaborately disguised by a law of copyright pretending that every work of art is an invention distinctive enough to be patented.

In terms of my Indianness, I try not to rely on it nor deny it. When it comes up organically in my writing, we can address it. About five years ago, we wrote this episode of 'The Office,' called 'Diwali,' which seemed like an organic way of using it.