Quotes About Artistry

For me, storytelling is what I love to do and that's my life's work. Football is not my life's work. It's just part of my life's journey, but creativity is my actual life's work.

I went straight in. Fade in, one... whatever. He's playing the piano in the radio station.

Write. Write. Write. Learn how to revise. No story is perfect straight from the keyboard.

When I sang, I couldn't help making those little curves. People would say, 'Why don't you sing straight?' But I have always had to put something in.

I've never been the straight rapper that is going to stand in a cipher and battle all day. I started off battle rapping, but to me, making songs became more important than freestyles... I've met many rappers who can freestyle but can't make a record.

I think I'm a straight actor who occasionally does musicals; most people think I'm an eccentric comedian. It's amazing how many years you can spend in this business just sorting out something as simple and basic as that.

You have to live what you write, or you have to know it. There are exceptions, like story songs, where you just have to have your facts straight. But I think you don't have to live a hard life to be a good or interesting songwriter.

I don't think I could write a straight drama.

When I talk about my artist parents, people imagine a bohemian environment and think, 'Aha, so that's where he gets it from!' But we were as white, straight, and middle-class as the next family on our white, straight, middle-class housing estate.

I find it hard to deliver straightforward things.

Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in.

I was a strange, loud little kid who could sit at the piano and kill a Beethoven piece.

The things in my songs are the edited highlights of my life. I don't go seeking out strange sexual experiences every day of the week.

I have a very strange melodic gift: melodies come to me effortlessly.

Increasingly I think of myself as some strange and solitary conductor, introduced to a group of very dynamic musicians who happen to be my characters, and I have no idea how they are going to play together, and I have certainly no idea how I am going to put manners on them.

That's the strange thing about making a record. You can be in one mood for an hour, put it on a record, and you're remembered that way.

The strange thing is that since I've been offered lots of films I think that maybe they think that I've sold out to Hollywood. Which is not the case if anybody's listening.

I'm not a musician, but I play music. So it's a strange thing.

In a strange way, I'm way more comfortable onstage than anywhere else.

You hear ten seconds of a song, and you know it's OutKast. There's a strangeness about it because it's catchy, but it's not just pop for the sake of pop. They're pushing the envelope.

I am the kind of person that wants to get up in front of crowds of strangers and perform monologues. To each their own.

I'm really proud of 'Kissing Strangers.'

How can I impress strangers with the gem-like flame of my literary passion if it's a digital slate I'm carrying around, trying not to get it all thumbprinty?

Two quilters who have just met will be strangers only until their mutual passion for quilting is revealed. Then they can talk for hours like the best of friends.