Quotes About Artistry

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't "try" to do things. You simply "must" do things.

Music's been around a long time, and there's going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it's a big record, that's the frosting on the cake, but music's the main meal.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

One time a McDonald's operator came to me with the idea he'd dreamed up to cut costs by producing a doughnut-shaped patty. His notion was to plug the hole with condiments, and cover it with a pickle so the customer wouldn't notice the hole. I told him we wanted to feed our customers, not fleece them, but I couldn't suppress a chuckle at the outrageous con artistry of the idea; a real Chicago fast one. We

A machine is as distinctively and brilliantly and expressively human as a violin sonata or a theorem in Euclid. —GREGORY VLASTOS

El verdadero poeta no se encuentra nunca "inspirado": está precisamente por encima de ese más y de ese menos, iguales a sus ojos, que son la técnica y la inspiración; iguales porque domina ambas a la perfección. El verdadero inspirado nunca está inspirado: lo está siempre; no busca la inspiración ni se irrita contra técnica alguna.»

Jimmy Bowen: You've got to find your own songs, because nobody but you knows what you want to sing.

The German word for tatting is Schiffchenarbeit meaning 'the work of the little boat

When I began making electronic music, the only thing I was thinking about was creating music that I really liked. I didn't think about what effect it would have; I was busy doing it.

People are buying music from 12-year-olds. No one realizes they didn't create this. They didn't write this. They didn't make this. All they have to do is press play, and you have a band.

All the buzz can be very much here today and gone tomorrow, but my focus is creating music that will last forever.

Nothing competes with the buzz of making your own record.

There's always ideas buzzing around, but it's whether they actually end up materialising into a song.

I had written six scores by the time I was 20, and I'd never been paid a dollar.

I think part of the process of putting out a record is always looking back because, by the time a song comes out, it's been a year since you wrote it.

I'm like Cab Calloway: I love the entertainment, and I've loved entertaining people ever since I was little.

I now do my own cabaret act, singing and telling stories about my life.

If you start adapting to audiences, you're really second-guessing the situation, and it becomes a bit more like cabaret.

I would like to record. I would like to do some cabaret acts.

There are no calculations in the records I make. I record as many songs as I can. Songs that I think are my best.

'Somebody's Calling Me' was written in my sleep, and the original was just the piano and the beat and the singing.

Any artist always has misgivings about calling himself an artist.

For me, with music, there is no half-stepping. This is my calling.