Quotes About Artistry

A lot of people don't remember anything since 'Ice Ice Baby,' but I've got 3 records out since then and they're all successes - but not commercially.

My stage successes have provided me with the greatest moments outside myself, my film successes the best moments, professionally, within myself.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

Part of the elasticity that you need, in order to continue to try to create, is the foregone conclusion that not all of it is going to be fabulously successful. But it's all going to be part of a long lifetime body of experimentation.

A musician is a professional, whether he or she is successful or not. The profession itself must be regarded as a stable job.

I like the idea that people hear my stuff, and if it's commercially successful, that's a good sign that it's being heard.

Sometimes you go for weeks without writing successfully, and you don't feel like a writer anymore. When friends ask me how my week was or how I'm doing, I think back on it, and I've just been by myself. Like, I'm just a sketch.

There were people who incorporated melody before me, but I would deem myself the first person to successfully rap and sing.

In 1965, when great young white artists in the English-speaking world were successfully re-channeling hillbilly and black music - you know Bob Dylan, Ray Davies, Pete Townsend, Keith Richards - they didn't get any money at first. They were all broke.

I do Broadway because I refuse to succumb to the stereotypical things that Hollywood does to a performer.

Kenny G is not real jazz. I don't even think Wynton Marsalis is real jazz. I don't think Harry Connick Jr. is real jazz. If there is such a thing as real jazz, The Lounge Lizards is real jazz, Henry Threadgill is real jazz, Bill Frisell is real jazz, you know?

Even if you're specific about the character of the song, it's more exciting to place them, juxtapose them in such a way as to make an adventure out of the sequence of the songs.

I tell everybody on the first day of making a movie that if anyone's here to further their career, they should leave. I'm gonna make the movie in such a way that we won't have a career when this movie comes out. Because the people who hold the moneybags are not going to want to share any of that money with us to make the next movie!

All these non-singing, non-dancing, wish-I-had-me-some-clothes fools who tell me my albums suck. Why should I pay any attention to them?

There's no secret crazy backstory. I actually suck at writing. It takes me forever to write a song.

There's a difference between a pop star and an artist. Pop stars have to be perfect all the time; an artist is allowed, on occasion, to suck. And I put myself in that category because I sometimes suck. I'm not trying to please the masses. It's not going to happen, so I don't try.

I like the way punk people perform better than rappers, because rappers suck at performing - no offense.

Allowing yourself to suck is the hard part of writing music. If you allow yourself to suck, you will probably write something better.

People get sucked into being so show-bizy. I mean this is show biz, but I just can't do anything that's not in my DNA.

For me, something will come in my head and I'll either end up calling my cell phone to record it, or I'll just pick my guitar up and see what comes out. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't. So there's really no set method behind it.

I can't watch a movie where the actors are great and the photography sucks.

I write all year, and at the end of the year I put an album out. And if sucks, it sucks, and if it's good, it's good. I just let it lay where it lays. It doesn't stop from doing another one next year.

My general premise is not about selling clothes. If that's your end goal, then all of a sudden everything looks the same, you know - you start designing by numbers.

I go in and out of season. I won't write for months, and then all of a sudden, I'll write like I've got a fever.