Laurie Simmons Quotes

There is no room in the world, as you say, for second rate work.

We hire people who want to make the best things in the world.

The goal is always to do B material in an A fashion.

When I work on my music, I always kind of just try to do my best work.

I would rather spend my entire life doing nothing than have my name attached to something mediocre.

Really great design is hard. Good is the enemy of great.

In art, 'good enough' is not good enough.

Even the people who have it do not definitely know what genius is.

You can be successful without learning music, but success has nothing to do with quality.

It's hard to make something that's interesting. It's really, really hard. It's like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that's written or anything that's created wants to be mediocre. The natural state of all writing is mediocrity... So what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such an act of will.

And he, who servilely creeps after sense, Is safe, but ne'er will reach an excellence.

If the world were clear, art would not exist.

I think I'm painting a picture of two women but it may turn out to be a landscape.

Never be satisfied with a first draft. In fact, never be satisfied with your own stuff at all, until you're certain it's as good as your finite powers can enable it to be.

I am incapable of mediocrity.

I hate crap, I like craftsmanship

There's too much bad. The worst is mediocre. Bad is easy. There's high quality, there's pornography, and then there's bad.

Don't ever let good enough be good enough.

I've often hesitated in beginning a project because I've thought, 'It'll never turn out to be even remotely like the good idea I have as I start.' I could just 'feel' how good it could be. but I decided that, for the present, I would create the best way I know how and accept the ambiguities.

Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last.

None of the arts are any good unless you really are great at them.

American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.

We measure genius by quality, not by quantity.

Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match.

Our best work can't possibly appeal to the average masses, only our average work can. Finding the humility to happily walk away from those that don't get it unlocks our ability to do great work.