Quotes About Artistry

I love wrestling, but to wrestle just one style for the rest of my life seems like it would really hold me down creatively.

Lizz Wright is my favourite singer. Her voice moves me and takes me to another place. She also grows her own food, and that inspires me.

I think I was drawn to black culture by the same things that have been drawing the entire world to it since the days of Richard Wright, Josephine Baker and Louis Armstrong. This culture is original, potent and seductive.

A lot of mainstream photographers seem not to think about what they're doing or feel any responsibility toward anything. By the time they're done, the models don't have any trace of themselves left. This thing about looking young with no wrinkles or expression is all so boring, really.

To be an artist, you don't have to compose music or paint or be in the movies or write books. It's just a way of living. It has to do with paying attention, remembering, filtering what you see and answering back, participating in life.

It's not how big your pencil is; it's how you write your name.

The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.

I'm not everybody's cup of tea. But sometimes criticism can be hurtful. Be respectful. I'm a good piano player, I can sing well, I write good songs. If you don't like it, fair enough. But give me a break.

I don't use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.

Write what you like; there is no other rule.

What can a pencil do for all of us? Amazing things. It can write transcendent poetry, uplifting music, or life-changing equations; it can sketch the future, give life to untold beauty, and communicate the full-force of our love and aspirations.

You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining.

I play a little guitar, write a few tunes, make a few movies, but none of that's really me. The real me is something else.

Chopin, Schubert, and Liszt had no idea of how to write for the piano.

When I write, I try to become different characters.

No one who cannot limit himself has ever been able to write.

I'm touched by the Beatles. I want some of the music I do to reflect that. Here I am. I love Sly Stone and James Brown and Stevie Wonder, and I want my music to reflect some of that. Here I am. I'm touched by Jon Hendricks. I want some of my music to reflect that. And when I write, you're going to hear it.

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

I kind of need to be ambulatory to write lyrics.

I love pop music, but at the same time, I'm seeking to write whatever I'm organically inclined to.

My greatest achievement is being able to write records that are real snapshots of what's going on in my life. I won't repeat myself for the sake of commerce, or to please other people.

I attempt to create a form of seriocomic entertainment to either delight, enlighten, or disgust, whichever you'd like. In terms of making motion pictures, I write and direct and act. I guess you'd say I'm a filmmaker.

Here's something I probably shouldn't be saying: I never listen to my soundtrack albums because I can't stand it. It's just stereo. When I write, I write in surround. My life is in surround.

I make it clear why I write as I do and why other poets write as they do. After hundreds of experiments I decided to go my own way in style and see what would happen.