William Stafford Quotes

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.

Very few artists are as independent as I am mentally, physically, spiritually and technically. I sit in my home studio and record things by myself. I don't need to get anybody's approval or validation.

To the extent that independent means you're willing to attempt to put your own ideas, personality, and commitment to the material on screen, then of course I hope I'm independent until the day I die.

If I'm going to go out to be a solo artist, it's because I want to do something different without having to wait on someone else's schedule or hobbies or be limited by other people's prejudices. I'd be kind of stupid not to exercise that.

I never think about what others are doing. I do a film for myself, not others.

My job is to just express something that I want to express. And if I'm ahead or behind the curve, that's for others to decide.

I feel, having the choices I had, I felt I had more control over my own medium than I did over photography.

I used to get in trouble with my old agent, because I've never been driven by fear or need or greed. I want my work to represent me as a person, so I can be quite fussy.

I had a certain career as an actor that I think was quite personal as well, and had a lot of integrity, but I wasn't writing my own things or directing my own movies.

I need to find a way of retaining creative control.

I can't be a spokesman for anything other than my own concerns. I have to be free to wrestle with my own preoccupations, and if I'm bringing any political awareness to that process, that mitigates my freedom.

I think this, I think basically I'm not interested in people following my work or making work like my work.

At the end of the day, I'm an artist. I may make work and decide to do something political, but it will come out of an artist's position. It won't come out of society telling me I have to. If I do, it's because I choose, as an artist, to do it.

I love having the control over the end result and not having to go through some committee to get something approved. I feel sorry for people, like actors, because unless you're Woody Allen or Mel Gibson, they don't have much say in the decisions that affect their work.

I couldn't be an artist who was told what to do, what to be, what to sing.

You should do the sound that you want and not what others want.

We got full artistic integrity and autonomy over what we were doing, and that was the main important thing that kept our band alive.

But you see," said Roark quietly, "I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.

Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others.

I make the music that I want to make and make the show that I want to make. If you like it, you come. If you don't like it, you don't have to.

I practice the artist's golden rule. I wouldn't want somebody telling me how to finish my painting, I'm not going to tell him how to finish his movie or how to shape his movie.

Good or bad, the one thing I can say about my art is, if I can quote Sinatra, I did it my way.

I try to please myself. I don't try to anticipate what people want to see.

I'm not the kind of person that seeks out other people's opinions on my works.

As a novelist, you have to be free. Books can't be an act of filial duty.