creative livelihood Quotes

I played guitar. I've always considered myself an actor, but I wasn't making a living as an actor. So I was in a couple of folk groups that managed to keep me in underwear and burritos.

No matter what went down, music was always going to be a part of my life. What ultimately happened is that, over a period of time, I just kind of looked around and when like, 'Wow! I'm actually making a living doing this.'

I'm not in it for my health. I'm a musician and I wanna live the way I do.

The problems you have as a novelist tend to have to do with making a living and trying to find ways to supplement the income you get from writing novels. For a lot of writers, that involves teaching. In my case, so far, I've been able to get by working in Hollywood with this TV stuff I've been doing. And it's very important, because my wife is a writer, too, and we don't have health insurance through any employer.

Originally my entire goal with music was for it to be my job. When I sit down to make a beat, I wanna know that I'm gonna get paid from it, and that I can pay my bills and still have money left over to be a person.

Working as a model liberated me from ever having to hold a day job. I transitioned from doing that to working full-time as an artist. If you're 19 and living cheap, being an artist model can sustain you.

It's a real wrenching thing to go from being a private person to being a public person, especially when you're being autobiographical. But it's what everyone wants - to get everyone's attention, to have your music make a living for you, to be validated in that way.

I used to sing as a living while I was at university.

I sing my song for a living, and I don't really worry about who listens or what they think. But it seems to make a living.

I realize that I really have to make music work for me as a career because I can't do anything else.

If you love writing or making music or blogging or any sort of performing art, then do it. Do it with everything you've got. Just don't plan on using it as a shortcut to making a living.

My career has been very strange. My career is like a heart monitor. I get involved in a good project now and then to keep things going. And then I make things that I work on that I hope are going to be good so I can make a living and keep a roof over the heads of those little monsters I have in my house.

Art and money are closely related. Try sitting down with a group of artists and ask them what's on their mind. Very quickly the topic shifts to money. And it can be very hard to get them off that subject.

The first rule of new media is nobody gets rich, but everybody gets paid, in a perfect world. Maybe you don't get fabulously wealthy doing your webcomic, but as long as you can make a decent living.

I'd much rather do an obviously commercial writing project than get a day job.

It's nearly impossible to make a living in the arts.

I have a weird life because I live on songwriting royalties, which are a strange income. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it doesn't.

I am proud to be able to claim that, from the age of nineteen, I've managed to earna living entirely as a composer.

When I'm introduced as a two-time Oscar winner, I'm happy that a film of mine has found an audience and some acclaim because that keeps me in business. A filmmaker's greatest concern is the ability to make future films, so it helps keep me in business.

I said to my kids, 'Learn the business of America if you want to be an artist in America. The rest of that stuff, the art part, you could pick up in an hour and a half.'

In my experience, what every true artist wants, really wants, is to be paid.

My generation was maybe the last in which you could set up shop as a writer and hope to make a living at it.

My parents were so far from the music world that they couldn't conceive how you could make a living. But for me, it was the only solution for the rest of my life.

It's nice to have awards from time to time. There was a time when I had to make a living from my writing, and it wasn't always easy. I value awards a lot - and more so if there is a little cash with them!

When you are able to make a living with your job as an artist, that means you have an audience and you have to thank this audience.