Creative Individuality Quotes

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

Any system that sees aesthetics as irrelevant, that separates the artist from his product, that fragments the work of the individual, or creates by committee, or makes mincemeat of the creative process will, in the long run, diminish not only the product but the maker as well.

Reciprocity helps us balance the need for self-determination and creative individuality with mutual hope and, therefore, what might be described as 'solidarity.'

I don't know if it's possible to affect my ego any more. There's no room left. For me, I think I make music like the way I think it should be made, like what rock should sound like. It has nothing to do with the current marketplace. And so from that state of mind, it's gonna sound different from anything else out there. And when something sounds different, I think that can be inspiring to other musicians.

I admire Elliott Carter endlessly. But I have no ambitions to emulate him.

David Lynch is very important to me, and he does dreamlike movies, but my dreams are not like David Lynch's dreams. I have no interest in copying anybody's work. It would never occur to me to want this to look like someone else's thing.

There is a lot of music out there that you can play side by side and you can't hear the personality - that has a timeline on it, for sure.

There is something inherently valuable about being a misfit. It's not to say that every person who has artistic talent was a social outcast, but there is definitely a value for identifying yourself differently and being proud that you are different.

Here's my unsolicited advice to any aspiring screenwriters who might be reading this: Don’t ever agonize about the hordes of other writers who are ostensibly your competition. No one else is capable of doing what you do.

In the contemporary world, artists are almost entirely self-referential.

My mother is like a character who escaped from the set of a Fellini film. She's a whole performing universe of her own. Activists would run a mile from her because they could not deal with what she is.

My style is so tightly tied in with our songs that I don't think you could even ask me to quit Radiohead and play guitar for another band. I don't think I could do it. It would probably reveal me to be the bluffer that I believe I am. That's how it feels. I wouldn't have the confidence to do anything but this.

To be really artful, though, you have to be subjective and so singular.

A man like Verdi must write like Verdi.

What is nice about country music today is that most artists are not trying to do something everybody else is doing. They really are trying to develop their own uniqueness.

I can say this much with confidence - that I now have a sound of my own

I'm not the next J. K. Rowling. We've got one already. It's flattering to be compared to her. I like her books and loved the first three particularly, but apart from the fact that they've got young boys as heroes, they're very different.

I'm not very happy to be classified as another Japanese designer. There is no one characteristic that all Japanese designers have.

Dandyism is a variety of genius.

I feel like with music there's so much ego rooted in expressing your thoughts and your experiences with it.

Musical expression is never primarily national, but is personal and individual rather. It is so deep, so profound, that it goes beyond and below nationality and gives voice to the most private feeling. In music there is never exact heredity. Each man is an individual.

Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected.

The Painter who seeks popularity in Art closes the door upon his own genius.

A lot of artists are aspiring to fill an archetype as opposed to being themselves. Even if they can't quite put their finger on it, fans can tell.

No one wants my painting because it is different from other people's peculiar, crazy public that demands the greatest possible degree of originality on the painter's part and yet won't accept him unless his work resembles that of the others!