Quotes About Artistry

In a way, the traditional album is no longer as important as it used to be. But at the same time, I don't want to be the kind of artist who just releases one song after another.

When you're doing the traditional musicals, singing songs that are 40 and 50 years old, you realize there's a reason why those musicals are hits. These are amazing songs!

If the lyrics are something new, then maybe I want to give it a more traditional form, or the other way around, but not have all one or the other.

I had more fun making Traffic than either of the Ocean's films.

Had I not been a choreographer, I would have become nothing more than a traffic cop or peon in an office.

I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?

I'm happy that I worked alone on 'Tragedy,' but it's obvious that I was trying to create something much bigger than I could do on my own.

People have become less discriminating listeners, which is tragic, really. There's a lot of emperor's new clothes out there, whether they're female or male solo acts. That bothers me. It's hard to break through, and it's like climbing Mount Everest if you actually do.

I think anyone who lays a long trail of creative work over the years can't help but look back and wonder, 'What was I thinking?'

Working in front of the camera keeps me alive. I couldn't care less about actors' trailers and food on sets and stuff like that - I just want to act.

And I've made it a choice on my records that sometimes I leave the breath or the trailing note that sometimes falls into a flat or a sharp.

We played it as long as we could play it on that CD and I think it might be 50 minutes, maybe. What you have to do is play a couple of songs and then get off the stage because everything that trails it sounds stupid.

I believe in sketching because there is something very sensitive in sketching, you know, in sketches that you don't have out of a computer that looks the same like everybody even if, later on, the dresses are OK, but I like to sketch, and I like to see trails made after my sketches that look the same. It is you know, what I like.

My lyrics are quite train of thought, and they are all over the place, but they evoke something.

Certainly, when you train as a classical dancer, you are very much influenced by 'Giselle.' You see it all the time; you start to learn the steps a little.

We really didn't have any literature telling us it was a good thing to be a woman artist. When I was trained, there were no precedents, and that was something to get really angry about.

I would hardly call myself an artist in that sense; I doodle, I draw, I'm not a trained artist, I couldn't sit down and do an accurate portrait of anyone.

Having trained in theatre, that is what I enjoy most as it gives the scope to grow as an artist with every individual performance.

I am trained as a film-maker. There is nothing else I can do.

My mom's a concert pianist, so she started teaching me when I was around seven. When I was eight, I started writing my own songs, and kinda started putting piano and singing together. But I'm trained classically, which is a big influence on me, I think.

I have this thing. I can rap really fast. I can rap really, really fast. It's a thing I'm good at and I've trained myself to do; it's a thing I do in the Bay Area.

I trained my son to be a puppeteer since he was a little boy.

And it's sad because it's like a surprise to people - almost an anomaly - when artists are actually refined and trained on an instrument. That's the last thing people think about.

I trained as a ballet dancer - well, I started when I was two and a half, and was serious about it from when I was eight until I was 18.