Quotes About Artistry

I might be like a conductor, or I collect the stuff together and I do a lot of my own writing. But what is a pleasure is the whole creative thing in which we're all excavating and trying to find something.

I played with the best conductors of the world.

I like writing and don't confine myself to just the words or just the music. But I don't particularly write songs with myself in mind.

Sometimes I don't want to be in the confines of what a band seems to provide.

The first five albums I did, I tried a little bit of everything. I was trying not to conform at all.

I always wanted to create my own musical world. That takes time and must be earned, and it does mean sometimes confronting the expectations of the audience.

That's what I look for in music anyway: I want someone to confuse me to the point where I look inwards rather than at what they're doing.

To write what is not dead on the page, one has to be open to all kinds of disturbances and challenges and confusion.

If you connect with an artist because of what they make as a body of work, you feel like they're your friend. You feel like you're on the journey of connection with them because they see the world the same way you do. That's so powerful, and if you use that, you can genuinely change minds.

I don't really care about audio quality. If people saw some of the ways that I record stuff, they'd see I don't care in that respect. I obviously care about things sounding good, but I think quality exists through other things like emotionally connecting with a lyric or a feeling, or whatever.

It feels really good that people are connecting to my music so much.

I had to figure out that finding my place was not about race but about creativity, and connecting with other artists helped me find my voice.

I've always had a close connection to both rock and classical music.

We try to do music with a conscience. We'd never look back and say, 'We are embarrassed or ashamed.' It paid off for us.

I feel like you come in under a cloak of someone else's skin for a while, but then you can shrug it off - you have to find your own voice, if you want to keep doing it. That became a really conscious thing for me.

I think you have some artists who try to be as conscious as they can be.

It wasn't a conscious decision to be bold or anything. It all depends on how different artists envision me.

As film makers or any artiste that put work out there, what you are doing on your level is that you are putting consciousness out into the world.

I'm surrounded by such beautiful, creative people, and I just love sort of sharing their stories and their journeys.

I wanted to be a film student again, as a man in my 60s. To go someplace alone and see what you can cook up, with non-existent budgets. I didn't want to be surrounded by comforts and colleagues, which you have when when you're a big time director. I wanted to write personal works.

I discovered early that as an artist there was absolutely nothing wrong with being surrounded by people who were not dedicated to your field.

My musical education started in the limelight, because I found myself surrounded by real musicians, but after my career had taken off.

Being in ballet class, being on the stage, being surrounded by my peers at American Ballet Theater every day, keeps me so humble and grounded. Being in ballet class, I feel, is like this meditation for me every morning.

I've always surrounded myself with other artists. My close friends, people I've been in relationships with - I went to an arts high school - even my elementary school was arts based.