Quotes About Artistry

It's weird. People want you to know that they write. They want you to know they're a musician, rather than making music or making stories. It's the strangest thing.

If I only made dances about my own experience in dance, it would always be on my track, and I don't want that, I want to be on the track of where dance can take me.

I've recorded a lot of vocals so far and I think they're kinda still in my own world, but I do have that urge sometimes. You want to push yourself to do other things.

I do write my own music, and I also have been doing a lot of non-Beatle covers, just singing whatever I want to sing, the way I want to sing. But it can be hard to find the time to do that.

As much as I remember, I just thought, I want to sing a song that starts normal and ends crazy.

Sometimes if you're a director, you want to believe that you're great and capable at all aspects - the technical side, the lights, everything - but I'm not.

My working life is me doing what I want to do. This is that. I've made movies that people don't go to see.

I'm most alive when I'm on set. Whether I'm imagining it on my head, I know what I want to capture.

I'm the last person that wants to give away music for free.

Often people going into directing want to learn as much as they possibly can about "technique." And I say the hell with that.

I'm not stupid enough to want to be famous. But I would like to be able to earn a living playing music.

It's not really important to make skillful movies. I think expressing yourself really well, skill-wise, is not as important. I want it to be sort of raw and rough but new and fun to watch.

Leaving stage with a bloody scalp, it's rock & roll, I guess, but I want some hair at the end of the tour.

I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What's the point?

When I'm writing a record, I kind of don't listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

I focus a lot on my voice because I want it to be an instrument as well. I want my voice to add color.

Any filmmaker would want to make something that can still be seen without someone saying, "Ugh that was repulsing, offensive, don't bother visiting it 2nd time."

I've become more confident in who I am as an artist and as a person. I know what I want and am not afraid to voice it in the studio. Or in life. Take it or leave it!

There's this other girl called Lykke Li from Sweden - I really want to collaborate with her, that'd be great. Obviously Kanye West as well, and Drake would be pretty amazing.

There are problems with the single already. I don't want to put out the first single, Hit the Freeway.

Being a black artist, the first thing people want to talk about is your blackness, the importance of your blackness and your black presence.

[Personal life] doesn't affect my creative process. It just gives me more subjects to talk about. Basically whatever you put in your music is how you want people to view you.

When people say, Did you always want to be a writer?, I have to say no! I always WAS a writer.

If you get into introspective blues or something where you're stretching out a bit, large audiences don't respond to this, so you have to give them what they want, basically.