Quotes About Artistry

I have a tendency to postpone starting a piece until it's kicked around in my head a little bit.

I have a tendency to overcut my movies.

There's a tendency for young musicians - I certainly was guilty of this - of wanting to know what they sound like, before making their first record, before releasing things. But I think that's the wrong order of operations. You only find out what you sound like, when you have five records under your belt.

I just really want to make - to be cliche about it, I want to make pretty music. Like Roy Orbison or Elvis, man. Those guys made beautiful, tender music.

The point is that I am such a big fan of Puccini and that Butterfly is the most difficult and complete role that you can imagine. Just to sing it with a good voice is not enough: it asks tears from your soul. I am very emotional on stage, and the music is so tender that I suffer for real when I am singing it. So I cannot do many performances.

I know a lot of artists and chefs don't talk about this, but sometimes you just don't get to the finish line. That honesty and tenderness is something we're kind of not supposed to express.

Where I've arrived now is the product of mixing the very straight with the very exploratory; there's a fine line between the two, although it tends to be getting straighter and straighter because my songwriting is getting better.

The corporateness of the fashion industry tends to take away or distort the freedom of creation.

It's not that I sit down and write great stuff without thinking, not at all. Most of it is terrible. But the stuff that feels fun and fresh to me tends to happen fairly unthinkingly.

I don't think we ever really think about it when we're doing it, because if you sort of go in with a plan of attack, it tends to take away the natural rhythm of songwriting.

You got to play the flute as a flute, like that. You can't play like a tenor concept on soprano; it sounds wrong. But some guys do it, and they think it's O.K., but not so!

When I sing, I want people to think only about the tenor and only about the music.

I play saxophone, I play tenor sax.

Jazz music should be inclusive. Smooth jazz to me rules out a certain kind of drama and a certain tension that I think all music needs. Especially jazz music, since improvising is one of the cornerstones of what jazz is. And when you smooth it out, you take all the drama out of it.

I think for any artist, your voice is always evolving. For me, the constant is finding a tension or balance between drama and comedy.

I feel like for me to write songs that I would be interested in as a listener, there has to be tension, and there has to be some kind of push and pull between reality and the potential of disaster.

I really like melodies that have a certain tension against the chords. I like writing things that are sort of insistent.

Designer Marc Jacobs ended his sixteen-year tenure at Louis Vuitton with a spring 2014 collection that celebrated fashion in its purest and least complicated form - as majestic, superficial beauty.

Right before I go out, we usually put on some Lauryn Hill or Fugees, and I'll do a shot of tequila just to calm my nerves.

I intend not to do an item song ever. I find the term 'item songs' bizarre. I do not want to comment on its presence and its popularity, but I would rather avoid it.

Yes, the first job I had at the studio was Snow White. I don't like the term particularly, but I got stuck with the human characters. They just didn't have that many people who could draw humans.

I used to be fast and loose with the term 'country' because I didn't know what else to call my music. I still don't.

Style is a form of expression! It's what makes your character your character, to put it in laymen's term.

The first record we put out on Fueled by Ramon, 'The Papercut Chronicles,' we had no idea what the term 'producer' meant. It was just us writing songs, and we are trying to go back to that - singing in a room and vibing off each other.