Laurence Fishburne Quotes

I've passed on a lot of huge-money jobs. Money doesn't enter into the decision-making. If I do a big blockbuster, it's about how big an audience you'll get and where you can take them.

Despite whatever commercial kind of success you might have or radio success, I don't want to do something just to get as many people as possible to listen.

I've found that if you just try to make the film you want, you'll find the right audience. If you try to please everyone, you're going to make really boring films.

I'm just not interested in selling out to get on the charts and make people happy.

I have always tried to work according to what affects me, to a script that I like because it touches me in some way, without deliberately pursuing a commercial career or a particular image.

Selling another 10 million albums is not a priority. Putting out something you're proud of is.

The way I choose projects is based on what I think is most real and most interesting, not on what's paying the most money or what's most popular.

I'd rather sell 10,000 records that represent me than 2 million that don't represent me at all.

When I write a book... it's the same essential approach to music as with books. It has to be something I want to hear or read. Hopefully the audience comes along, since that's the only way you can write righteously. I have to ask, 'What do I want to hear?' not 'What do people want to hear?'

The only way for me to be an artist is to be honest in my craft. If I veer from that, I'm not giving the investors what they want. Sometimes it's my job as an artist to know what I want to do, even when the fans tell me different.

I suppose we'll make money off our album and our singles and stuff, but, like, they were made as we wanted them, exactly with what we had to say, and done exactly how we wanted them, right? And, like, we didn't put them out to make money. We put them out because we wanted to do them, do you know what I mean?

You hear it said time and time again by successful directors: You have to make a movie for yourself. Don't make it for anyone else.

It's not always about huge giant commercial success. It's about art.

I didn't want to do the whole, get the hottest person thing. I wanted to make sure every record felt right.

All we try and do is make the best films we can. If you do that then hopefully the audiences will come, and they have. Everything else is gravy.

There is an incredible love in creating art unless somebody is saying, 'Hey, let's just make money,' because it doesn't work when you do it that way. If you are aiming for that, forget it.

I've never believed in cheapening music by going according to what some people think is public taste.

In the music industry, we value large success. I realized that while I would like that, that it's not what my writing is about. And if I start making it about that, it becomes impure.

I don't want to sell my soul to Hollywood - to just make run-of-the-mill stuff.

You have to be tough-skinned and willing to accept criticism, and at the same time, just try to do music that you like and you are proud of and not just whatever you think it's going to take to get you on the radio.

I didn't want to be told what to do. I don't want to water down my music to fit into their formats. I know what rock and roll is to me, but everything's turning into one big commercial.

Every script I've written and every series I've produced have expressed the things I most deeply believe.

Mainly, I don't like it when music is made solely to impress people or in order to please business people; it doesn't sound good to me. If you're making music in order to become famous or loved by the masses... that's not what I'm about. When somebody's making music for the wrong reasons, I hear it right away.

I sometimes think it's better to go with a bad movie that is true to a certain point of view than to take something and make people try to like it when they're not supposed to.

I don't do something because I think it will sell 30 million albums. I couldn't care less. If it sells one, it sells one.