Quotes About Artistry

My energy to sing, I get it from my singing. Singing was not a reason to make a living. This is the only thing I wanted to do.

Reason is a fine thing, but it is not the only thing available to a writer. It's just part of the arsenal of many things available to a storyteller. Revelation, for example.

You have to be narcissistic to be an artist. You have to think you are the centre of the whole thing; otherwise, why do you create? The only thing is to recognise it, and then you make the best of it.

The only thing I want to be defined by is my music and personality.

The only thing that's ever made sense to me has been sitting in the house by myself making music.

The only thing I have ever really cared to be known as is a musician.

I've done every job in the world, and movies, the only thing close to a movie that I've ever done is it's kind of like being in a band.

The problem with working under an outside label is that your music never seems to reach the right people.

The problem with being a writer/director: unless you're really disciplined, you start adding projects, and you have to make time to make them. Because you have to write them... no one else is writing them for me.

I can't create music if I'm wearing a mask and not being myself, and that was the problem with The Czars.

When you get on stage, you can be anything. You are removed from reality in a way, the real world.

Sometimes films might not work, but you as an actor should keep working. Because no matter how much you panic about how your film didn't work, eventually, when you step out in the real world, there are people who value you as an artist.

It's always about trying to make everything go with the music, like a script. It's not like, 'Let's have a confetti gun!' If I ever have one of those, it will be because it's absolutely the right thing at the moment in the song. I can't just go get a confetti gun.

My mission is to just keep creating music. If it helps people in some way, then I'm doing the right thing.

As an artist, you're very sensitive about your art. And you feel like, 'Am I doing the right thing? Am I making the right music?'

The secret of success in cinema lies in not just being talented but showcasing your talent to the audience. And, that happens only when you get the right films and directors.

The band that changed my life was The Who. It's hard to pick just one album, but if I had to pick the one that really showed me how things could be done, it's 'The Who Sell Out.' They really went to town on that, doing something that no one had ever done before.

I would love to play the drums with 'The Who.'

My first love was singing. It was the first thing that really felt like it was a part of me. It's just in my blood. And acting came sort of out of singing because I did a lot of musical theater.

Well, all I can say is thank goodness I had 15 years of theater before ever I did film roles. You build technique that you can rely on.

Combining music, theater and comedy is a new and broader form of expression. In certain combinations you can make people laugh one moment, cry the next, and then be astounded by the beauty of the music.

I'm an idealist. I'll die an idealist in the theater. I'll stick to my convictions if I starve to death.

The beauty of making theater is that you have to go and do it the next day. Making a show nightly is a really difficult skill. It's something every theater actor and every theater maker is challenged with.

I had begun my professional career when I was 9 years old at the Cleveland Play House, and it was a very specific, real theater sort of like, you know, in England and the Berliner Ensemble - very devoted people. And I thought the theater was the greatest place I had ever been, and that's what I wanted to do.