Sharon Van Etten Quotes

I feel like I introduce another level of my creative ability on every album.

I like to take on roles that help me explore a different side of me, collaborate with people who I've always admired or newer people who have something interesting to say.

It just makes you a better artist when you're with people who are great artists themselves. Being around Kanye, soaking up all the knowledge, all the stuff he got.

That's what's great about the arts. Everything inspires you, and you get a chance to grow from watching other people and how they do their work.

I think that as an artist, the more that you can do to diversify, and kind of challenge yourself, the more you grow.

What you learn from working with other performers and musicians is invaluable, really, and can only help you grow. I mean, if you spend your whole life focusing on yourself, you're not really learning much.

I'm just gonna keep growing as an artist, and I'm excited to work with different people and learn from all these other talented, creative people that I've been around. It's so inspiring to be around other people who have ideas you haven't thought of, and all of a sudden you're like, 'Wow! That's so amazing!'

A mistake I've made is I have not worried sufficiently about the art world, really. I have not concerned myself with the other people in the art world. I've been a little too singular, and that's a mistake I've made. But everybody makes a mistake of some kind, and if that's my only mistake, I'm happy.

I think that new artistic challenges help you grow both as a person, as an artist, and then they feed back into your other work, and tend to magnify it.

I don't want to compare myself to Picasso, but he had four or five periods in his life. Any good artist grows and changes and matures.

The more that I can work in different mediums, the more I can grow, and learn from different actors and different types of actors and directors and different styles of acting and build a tool box.

A Tribe Called Quest was one of those things where it was supposed to be about growth. When I say 'growth,' I don't just mean with our sound or our product, but Tribe was supposed to grow as individuals.

Every little opportunity and chance that I get to be on a set, to be a director, to utilize the skill sets that I already have and to learn what I don't know, and to see how I can improve upon that is just a really great opportunity for me.

I am capable of much more. I guess every artist feels that way. If you are satisfied, you begin to stagnate. I want to grow as an actress every day. There are so many things you can learn, and you can improve upon your skills and abilities every day.

As a director, I really wanted to learn and I needed to get away from my own stuff to figure out how to just do things and work with good people.

The more I grow as an artist, the more I think I become like my father as an artist. The more I diversify, the more I become like my father, which is true to who he was.

The stage sharpened my creative instrument and encouraged me to go deeper and try new things.

The goal as an actor is to constantly surround yourself with amazing artists who challenge you and make you grow.

It's like two years straight out of your life doing a film. It's very enjoyable, especially working with the guys, but I kind of like the idea of traveling and growing, and developing as a writer and as a filmmaker.

Alan is a great guy, a terrific guy. We haven't worked together since then, and he's always working with different artists. I think he sees different dimensions he can see from different guys.

Television and cable have become the new independent films, in a sense, for writers and actors to gravitate towards. That's why I like short films, too; I love doing readings, audio books, working with young filmmakers; anything that keeps you from getting blase about yourself or in a rut.

Every new writing project, every new artistic project, needs to be protected so it can grow on its own before it begins to creep out into the world.

Magicians are typically introverted; they don't tend to work with others, but I work with software programmers, composers, designers, so it's a very diverse group and the result is always more interesting than something I could have done by myself.

I've said this before, but after 'That '70s Show' ended, I solely wanted do films that inspire me, and to work with people who make me better. I wanted to just surround myself with people who I think are better than I am, whether they're actors or directors or producers, so that I could learn from them.

The cool thing about working and meeting a lot of people through your acting is that you never know who you might work with, in the future.