Quotes About Artistry

You are always working on your worst book and your best book at the same time. The praise does not make you write better, and it shouldn't make you write worse, either.

When they write a bad review, and you agree with it, that's the worst feeling. When you know you've done what you wanted and the best you could and you love the outcome, then you look at everything differently. Not everyone's going to love everything you do.

The worst thing you can think about when you're working is yourself.

Behind the notes, something different is told, and that's what the interpreter must find out. He may sit down and play one passage one way and then perhaps exaggerate the next, but, in any event, he must do something with the music. The worst thing is not to do anything.

The worst thing you can do as an artist is to repeat yourself.

When I'm out and people ask me what I do for a living, the worst thing you can say is, 'I'm a singer.' It opens up a can of worms.

It's... a hard thing for a director, to think you came up with a shot, something from your mind, and someone died while doing it. It's the worst thing you'll ever have to live with. It was very hard for me to get back on the horse again.

The worst thing I could be thinking is how could I be a cool bass player.

The best and the worst thing about fashion is that anyone can do it. But because fashion can be the most unintellectual thing, you have to turn it into an intellectual exercise just for your own sanity. You have to start with a conceit.

The worst thing you can have as an actor is too big an ego. It just kills creativity.

Branding your song is the worst thing you can ever do. That's turning your song into a product.

I think the worst thing in the world is for artists to produce themselves.

The worst thing about the music business is the business part of it. Business has nothing whatever to do with writing, playing and performing.

When I'm dead, I want to be remembered as a musician of some worth and substance.

Not only is your story worth telling, but it can be told in words so painstakingly eloquent that it becomes a song.

My guiding principle when writing with other people is that it's not worth it to give someone a song unless it hurts for me to give them that song.

If I'm going to sell out, I'm going to sell out all the way, so a bid by the studio would be if you're going to go through the pain of trying to make a film, it's gotta be worth it.

When you write, you're inside the project. You can't really think about the reception. It has to be worth it even if no one reads it.

I never ever wanted to change my sport... Figure skating was my outlet, it was my breath, it was how I could live and transmit everything I was feeling and everything I had worked for and given up and all these sacrifices I'd made throughout the years. It was how I could make them all worth it.

'Swan Lake' can be a nightmare. To make a 'Swan Lake' that is worth it, every single movement and breath has to be perfect. When you have an idea of 'Swan Lake' that is as high as that, it's almost impossible.

I want everything we do to be beautiful. I don't give a damn whether the client understands that that's worth anything, or that the client thinks it's worth anything, or whether it is worth anything. It's worth it to me. It's the way I want to live my life.

Essayists, like poets, are born and not made, and for one worth remembering, the world is confronted with a hundred not worth reading. Your true essayist is, in a literary sense, the friend of everybody.

I've never felt that I was doing anything more worthwhile musically than when I was with Steely Dan.

All the other rappers around me aren't saying anything worthwhile. They're lost in rap: all they do is tell you they're a sick MC and they're better than you. I don't want to look like all these other little punk, dress-up, fake, manufactured artists. I'm not a rapper. I'm an activist.