Quotes About Artistry

I was delivering papers when I was, like, 10 or 11, and I'd always daydream about being an artist as a full-time thing.

Coldplay was big for me in the 2000s. 'Parachutes' was a good album.

I'm the happiest when I'm in the studio, not on a beauty parade.

You really do have the license during fashion week to wear the things that you wouldn't necessarily wear to dinner, because it really is a fashion parade.

The first movement ballerina should be a paradigm of strength and authority.

I always thought my best album was 'Trouble in Paradise.' I was the happiest with that one.

I don't do much rewriting, because each paragraph is very carefully put together.

I became paralyzed as an artist with writer's block.

It's hard to really articulate what the parameters are that make one song parody-able and another song not, but if I can come up with a good enough idea for it, I go for it, and if not, then I have to move on.

I think creating of any sort, whatever line you're in, is paramount - you can be an architect, you can be a banker, you can be anything - I think that when you create, you're closest to God and yourself.

I had heard a live show, where my voice didn't sound the way I wanted to hear it and I got paranoid. I'm not an amazing singer, I just belt it out in this crappy old way, but for a while I had it in my head that I couldn't sing.

People forget that the same man who did 'Star 80' and 'All that Jazz' also did 'Pardon Me Miss But I've Never Been Kissed.'

I think I'm an okay parent, but I'd put myself in the category of a musician-who-happened-to-become-a-father. I'm definitely not a father-who-happened-to-be-a-musician.

I always loved bulbs, and I use light a lot in my shows. In my office in Paris, I have 300 bulbs.

When I first started singing in Paris, I sounded horrible: I was just singing to get some money to eat. And I wasn't singing my own songs: it was Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix. Eventually, when I wrote my own music, my style just came out of my own place.

Genre expectations can kill creativity. If you do something different, it will get hated. The best filmmakers can do everything on the approval list and knock it out of the park. For me, I have a hard time being creative when I have to color in between the lines.

I wouldn't be as comfortable with who I am if it had not been for Prince. I mean, my label 'Wondaland' would not exist without 'Paisley Park' coming before us.

Lee Chang-dong, Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho. I think the three filmmakers tell the stories that they really want to tell. Their movies always reveal what they think must be told. I have a lot of respect for that.

I listened to classical music. I listened to jazz. I listened to everything. And I started becoming interested in the sounds of jazz. And I went to a concert of Jazz at the Philharmonic when we lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and I saw Charlie Parker play and Billie Holiday sing and Lester Young play, and that did it. I said, 'That's what I want to do.'

I love guys like Charlie Parker.

You listen to Charlie Parker or John Coltrane before they found their voice, they sounded different. And when you listen to them after they found their voice on their instruments, they sound more confident and in control. Artists have that, too.

Charlie Parker was a genius, as was Lester Young.

I grew up listening to Ravel, Debussy, Bartok and jazz like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhart. It was incredibly inspiring! And I was given a guitar and I said 'What the hell is this?!'

I'm a musician, and I'm not interested in being in the Houses of Parliament.