John D'Agata Quotes

I come from an art-school background, and I still feel that in my music, it's about exploration and challenging myself, about putting myself in a place that's frightening because I haven't been there before.

I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.

The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to. As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all we must dare to fail. You must be willing to risk everything to really express it all.

It's easy to make something avant garde. To do something in the traditional way is much more brave in the sense that you're - your technique is so much more exposed because there's not all this flashy stuff to distract the viewer.

Every artist has to grow, and has to challenge themselves with a new form of expression.

I want to change things with everything I do, not for the sake of changing things, but for the sake of taking greater and greater risks, or how minimalist I might be able to be, or how I can involve elements or ingredients in music videos that are not musical, for instance.

When I've worked with established artists, I've naturally been more restricted, but you still have to take risks and push yourself to do something different.

I want to do something creative, not just easy.

Never try to make the same record twice, even when people are screaming for the same sound.

Dancers, like all performing artists, like nothing better than to be challenged.

Everything that an artist does is a risk. Some people want you to stay the same. If you want to evolve, they want to keep you in a certain place.

The artists I look up to are the ones who push their own limits.

I feel like every artist has an opportunity to create something new and to challenge themselves to reach out to a new crowd.

People sometimes get a little extra criticism when they try something that they don't normally do, but I think that's just a natural thing for artists. It's like, 'Okay, I did that, and now I want to try this.'

I think I come from a time when all the artists I grew up with and I loved always used to try and push the boundaries, and there doesn't seem so much of that, really.

There's nothing wrong with doing comedies, and I'm not against comedies, either, but I always want to do stuff that keeps me off my guard and gets me out of my comfort zone.

Sometimes you write songs that don't all fit together. What do you, just throw them away? This might be a chance for growth and learning. It could be a horrible fall-on-your-face kind of experiment.

I try new techniques and styles almost every day, so I'm always challenging myself.

Creative life should be more than preaching to the converted, more than going for a core audience of 100,000 people. It should be taking risks, challenging the readership and having enough faith in one's own talent and craft to take readers on that ride.

You want, as an artist, to be pushing yourself to do what you haven't done before.

It isn't an easy job to paint oneself - at any rate if it is to be different from a photograph. And you see - this, in my opinion, is the advantage that impressionism possesses over all the other things; it is not banal, and one seeks after a deeper resemblance than the photograph.

Be willing and unafraid to write badly, because often the bad stuff...forms a base on which to build something better.

The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.

As a poet or a novelist or a painter, you are pushing yourself all the time, always looking for a new way to approach something, challenging yourself and never, never trying to write the same book twice.

Being a good artist is the toughest job you could pick, and you have to be a little nuts to take it on.