Creative Conviction Quotes

If you only believe that you're an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that's quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

I will die for the art & what I believe in. The art ain't always gon' be polite.

The way I write my songs is that I have to believe what I'm writing about, and that's why they always end up being so personal - because the kind of artists I like, they convince me, they totally win me over straight away in that thing. Like, 'Oh my God, this song is totally about me.'

If you're convinced as an artist of what you're doing, the only move is to, no matter what people say or what management says or your best friends say or people on Facebook, do what you do, and people will find their way to it.

I wouldn't be doing motherfu**ing films for almost three decades if every time I did something that someone didn't like I went in a fu**ing cocoon and just hid there and didn't make my art.

This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.

Belief of some sort is the lifeblood of Art.

Every actor believes in his way of performing.

I've never, ever taken a role for money purposes or for some bizarre notion of what may be the kind of career move that would open things up for me. If I don't believe in it, I can't do it because I won't be good in it if I don't believe in it.

Write plays that matter. Raise the stakes. Shout, yell, holler, but make yourself heard. It's time for playwrights to reclaim the theatre. We do that by speaking from the heart about the things that matter most to us. If a play isn't worth dying for, maybe it isn't worth writing.

You've got to care about the music...You'd better not be doing it for the publicity, the fame or the money. And you'd sure better not be doing it because it's a way to make a living, 'cause that ain't always going to be easy. You got to believe it, believe in the music. You got to mean it.

I have talked quite long enough about my own follies. The thing is to finish the thing as devised and then let it be judged. But forgive me! It is written in my life-blood, such as that is, thick or thin; and I can no other.

I cannot do a film I don't believe in, however safe it might be.

If you were making poetry out of convictions - trying to convince other people - you were in the territory of rhetoric, and that wasn't the territory of poetry. I think that's pretty smart. I think that it doesn't need to be altogether true, but that was my starting place.

I always believed in the music we did and that's why it was uncompromising.

Dhobi Ghat' is the only script I actually completed and that I was convinced about wanting to direct.

I only record songs that I really like and believe in and can sing with conviction.

An artist's career doesn't happen in the cycle of one week of news. An artist's career happens in a lifetime, and if you're a true artist you're willing to die for what you believe in.

I'm never going to sing another song I don't believe in. I'm never going to make another picture I don't believe in.

Sometimes I test myself saying, 'If I get a death sentence if I don't make this movie, would I still make this movie?'

I'm a believer in the notion that artists who do good work believe in the ideas of extremes.

I feel that the music that I do is somewhat of a lost art and it's not as popular as dance or pop music and people are not as interested in it. But it's something that I believe in and I feel that it's needed, so that's why I do it and I will keep doing it until everybody hears it and gets it.

I think making a film that you think is good and you believe in is going to be difficult forever.

When I first heard 'Let Me Love You,' I knew immediately it was going to be a hit. I believed in it and I had to literally force it down the throats of his record label, who weren't believers at first.

I hope everybody thinks they've got the best album. I wouldn't have put mine out if I didn't think it was the best.