Andre Malraux Quotes

If the only people we seek to impress are within our own ivory towers of artistic excellence or our hallowed institutions, we will find the audience is gone in 20 to 30 years. I find as I keep a broader audience in mind, I choose to sing and say more things I actually want to share and fewer things just for the sake of impressing others.

I think every artist should follow their vision; their hearts is what they need to reveal, not something that society is looking out for. That said though, I think also artists have, continuously good artists, have been good for their times.

I'm trying to do work that makes meaning and sense to me and the audience. But I have no qualms. I'm always willing to be a part of commercial cinema.

Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art.

Most of the music you hear on the radio today is developed for making money. It doesn't feel true or honest. You can feel it in the music.

You want to reach people, but you also want to reach them in the most authentic way. You now have a mass market and an audience that's listening, but they're in love with a song that means absolutely nothing to you.

It's so much easier to write for a person in your life than to write for some imagined readership, so you write something that's more intimate and true.

No book that is written for an external purpose is going to be a passionately felt book for the writer or the reader. I don't see the point in doing that.

Well, the stuff that has become more commercial doesn't have any edge.

All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.

This is the age of insincerity. The movies had the misfortune to come along in the twentieth century, and because they appeal to the masses there can be no sincerity in them.

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

What's my dilemma here? Am I making entertainment or am I making art? What am I saying? At the end of the day, cinema is entertainment for millions of people, but for me it's expression.

I would love to be one of the few artists that hits a point of success and can go back into the studio and make another album that matters and relates to people and not go back in and be super tainted by this whole thing.

TV is art. It's mass art. It's accessible to the masses.

Factoring in millions of people when I'm writing a song is not a good idea. I don't ever do it.

I don't think it's an artist's responsibility to be political all the time. I think your first responsibility as an artist is to make music that people will listen to and enjoy. However, I think that when you are able to say something that is moving and put it in a great song, then that is even better.

I don't think you're selling out by allowing the masses to love your art. The only curse is that, when you get so big, sometimes people forget to look at the music.

Before the money or anything, number one, it was just to put out real music, real stuff with a passion, real art.

I feel you lose your audience when you make movies for others and not for yourself or your people.

I just want to make great music. There's not a genre that I would categorize it as, but I want it to be true and authentic.

As an artist, what you do represents who you are. Coming from a genuine, honest place - that's what I'm trying to do.

My films are as much for the people as they are for me. The reception affects me, but doesn't change me as a person. That's important.

I don't think that independent or off-beat films are not commercial, nor do I want to categorise them. At the end of the day, what matters is how much you compromise to please the masses. But, I am not someone who loves compromising. If there's a lot to give up on things that matter to me, I start losing interest.

You've got to be in a place where you can put your guard down. I've got a long list of things I consider to be selling out. But amongst that list, one of them is when you make art without putting your guard down.