Quotes About Artistry

When I was writing the first few books, what I would do is write a bunch of sentences and then go back and expand and explode those sentences, pack as much into them as I could, so they'd kind of be like popcorn kernels popping... all this stuff in there to make the writing dense, and beautiful for its density.

I've conducted the Boston Pops! Imagine that! Me! Maya Angelou! I've sang and danced at La Scala!

I like to create whatever that pops up in my head, bring whatever idea to life.

I don't know what people find or like in me, I'm hopelessly commonplace! Current appreciation of my work is a bit highbrow, I've always considered myself a popular artist.

But, in fairness to them, too, the popular song per se is really a pretty shallow medium to perform in.

There's no difference in a lot of people's minds between good musicians and popular musicians.

Having a set, popular formula does inhibit you.

There's a great difference between being popular and being an artist.

The Four Seasons was making me popular in Britain, but EMI America had no interest in making that happen in the States, so I just had a classical career there.

I never know if a song's going to be popular so I don't select them with that in mind. All I can do is follow my heart and my gut and go for songs that make me feel great.

I make popular music but I'm not necessarily a pop produce.

My thing is, once you start to put a backbeat on your music or something that has a machine in it, you have popularity, but you lose the flexibility. And you lose a richness.

We live in an era of social media. We care more about looks, popularity and followers than about real music. And I wanted to get away from that.

It's not a popularity contest to me. It should always be about the music.

Everybody used to be busy writing songs - great songs - that became hits. Now everybody's writing hits. Everybody's desperately writing a hit because they know they can't survive if they don't have a hit. Where in the past, we were writing a song like 'More Than Words' on a porch, not really believing it was gonna be a hit.

I make these songs for me. That's the truth. I make them because that's what I want to hear. Long before you ever hear it, believe that I'm in a Porsche with the top off listening to it.

You have to give every portion of yourself to it. As an artist, that is just what you do - because we love it - we were born to do it.

Comic-strip artists generally have very modest ambitions. Day to day, we labor to fit together all these little moving parts - a character or two, a few lines of dialogue, framing, pacing, payoff - but we certainly don't think of them adding up over time to some larger portrait of our times.

All my forebears worked for a living. My grandfather painted portraits. My mother too. My aunt painted seascapes.

I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits.

As a dancer, when you're moving, you're listening to music so much because you're trying to portray it with your body. You're dissecting a song way more than anyone would actually think you are.

Every artist picks what they want to put out there, what image they want to portray, and what they want people to know about where they're from.

It's almost schizophrenic who I portray in my music.

When I do my makeup, it kind of helps me get into the character that I'm trying to portray.