Steven Pressfield Quotes

When no one's buying your records, it's easy to justify selling a song. But once you start selling records, you can't really justify having two songs in Cadillac commercials. It looks greedy. And it is greedy. This whole music thing should be about music.

If you go to Hollywood, you've already sold out.

I absolutely loathe the idea of doing a fragrance simply as a moneymaker. Personal brand to make money? Vomit.

I never want to record something that I'm not proud of just because I think it might be a big hit. There's no positive about that because if you record a song you hate and it's a big hit, then you're singing a song every night that you hate. And if you record a song that you hate and it isn't a hit, then you sold out for no reason.

I really don't believe in the word 'selling out.'

I'm not in this to make money. I would not have sold my soul to be on 'American Idol.'

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

The challenge artists face today is whether to be an underground, unheard genius, or to dilute their art for the marketplace.

The irony about selling out is that they only call you a sell-out when your stuff finally sells - I've had products bearing my name since I was 14, but nobody was buying them then.

Trying to guess what the (mass) audience wants and then trying to satisfy that is usually a bad recipe for getting something good.

It's just a campy blast. I just want to do as little as I can and make it good, and try not to sell out. I'm sure I will, but I'm just trying to postpone it.

I feel that if you made your writing too contrived to meet the market, it wouldn't be any good.

I would urge all bands that say they only care about credibility and don't care about money to send Gene Simmons every dollar that they don't want. I'd be happy to take it off them.

There's no real excuse for being successful enough as an actor to do what you want and then selling out. You do it pure. You don't try to adapt it, make it commercial.

I've decided something: Commercial things really do stink. As soon as it becomes commercial for a mass market it really stinks.

Anybody who goes searching can find enough artistic things I've done that nobody can ever say I sold out.

I now believe that major labels can only work with people who care more about fame and money than the quality of the art they produce.

I love Michael Bay movies. I don't think I'd be selling out if I did one. I happen to like his movies. I think selling out is doing something you don't believe in, and you're doing it for a selfish purpose.

There's definitely been some songs in the past that we've put out, and it was purely us going, 'Okay, we think radio will play this. We think this will be a hit. This will be big for the show,' and all this stuff. But it's like, do you really believe in it?

It's appealing to me to get to be in a commercial film without feeling like I sold out.

When I started off as an actor, the last thing I wanted to do in the world was make money. I was under the impression, when I started off as an actor, that the more money I made, the more it would diminish from my creativity and my capacity to be an artist.

All I've got to say is if I'm a sellout, I'm selling out arenas all over the world, and I'd rather be selling out arenas than selling out of my trunk on the corner of my block.

There's a lot of pressure that comes from the mainstream stuff, and already people who have been saying - people who don't know any better - have been saying things to me like, 'You should really think about neosoul. You'd definitely be more successful in that.' But that's not my expression.

We did the 'L.A. to Miami' album, with the song 'Miami, My Amy,' which really saved my life as far as confidence goes. It gave me a hit. But it wasn't really what I was about - and I think deep down inside I knew it, even if I didn't want to face it.

I've always said it's easier for bands to make a hard stance - like, we don't do commercials or whatever, blah blah blah - when you've sold billions of records. It's super-easy to be righteous when you're rich.