Quotes About Artistry

I started recording in my sophomore year in high school. I recorded things on my cell phone in my basement.

'House of Balloons' was special because I had no deadlines, and nobody knew me, so there were no expectations. Spent a year making it perfect. Every song had at least, like, 7 different versions to them before picking the right one.

I grew up when I was 15 when I had my first opportunity in movies. I watched every great movie for a year and a half, and since then I've asked myself how I can emulate such artistry. That's really my motivation. I want to do something as good as my heroes have done.

There are at least two retrospectives of my work each year in some country.

Right before I auditioned for 'American Idol' my mom made me kinda cut my hair off, but year, I was wearing makeup from, like 13 to 16, and I was like completely a girl from 14 to 16.

My songs are my girlfriends. I have a secret romance with all of them. I romance with them year after year.

Whenever I release a record, it's my record. It's not a selfish thought. I may work all year 'round for other people. So, finally, when I come out with my own album, it should be me with the creative help of other musicians.

After I finish any film, I move to the next one. It takes about a year to write and another six months are for pre-production and other things. You need a minimum of two-and-a-half months for the shooting of a new film. Then, I also edit my own film.

I am a poor student sitting at the feet of giants, yearning for their wisdom and begging for lessons that might one day make me a complete artist, so that if all goes well, I may one day sit beside them.

I started ballet in my early 20s. I studied for about ten years. Ballet is probably the one of the hardest things I've done, almost like MMA. People don't give it a lot of credit and think it's easy, but it's very difficult. For an athlete, you use muscles you really don't use, and ballet is something I really respect.

Lil Wayne was a big inspiration. Started listening to him like 6 years old. His lyrics are crazy, his wordplay and how different he was stood out.

It's weird when you see pieces of choreography that were done for you 15 or 20 years ago and now they are being done by another dance company.

The invention of Bob Dylan with his guitar belongs in its way to the same kind of tradition of something meant to be heard, as the songs of Homer.

If I belong to a tradition, it is a tradition that makes the masterpiece tell the performer what to do, and not the performer telling the piece what it should be like, or the composer what he ought to have composed.

Writing is not a matter of choice. Writers have to write. It is somehow in their temperament, in the blood, in tradition.

Jazz has a tradition that has enriched the culture in America. The intellectualism of it does nothing but make you think on a higher level and make you a better person if you engage in the music and let it do what it does when it is played at its highest level.

In my opinion, there's nothing new in the theatre, ever. Theatre-makers are thieves, in the honourable tradition of charlatans. They fake it very, very well indeed for the entertainment of everybody else.

I'm still trying to make it. I'm still trying to get this over and do it and hopefully leave some kind of a mark on the course of American music, particularly in the tradition of what you might call the singer-songwriter.

John Lee Hancock is someone that I had admired from afar. I think he is a wonderful director... in the tradition I would say both of Clint Eastwood and Frank Capra.

I'm always about trying to fill a need with what I do in my artistry. There is definitely a need in the performing arts world for a movement to come along that seriously connects with a next generation audience while still maintaining the timeless artistic objectives present throughout the history of the American music tradition.

I want to take the great tradition of the orchestra within me, to take what the orchestra offers.

I think I affiliate with somebody like Ben Howard. He's quite a bit younger than I am, but I think what he's doing is in a very similar tradition.

I feel proud to be a part of rock n' roll and the whole tradition of rock n' roll.

That's what is so great about being able to record a 13-song album. You can do a very eclectic group of songs. You do have some almost pop songs in there, but you do have your traditional country, story songs. You have your ballads, your happy songs, your sad songs, your love songs, and your feisty songs.