Artistic Conviction Quotes

Here's how I've lived my life: I've never been late to a set. I make films I believe in. I feel privileged to be able to do what I love.

I was very focused when I wanted to make 'Dil Chahta Hai,' though it was difficult for me to convince people that I know how to make films and I will be able to direct and put a film together.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that... I believe in what I do, and I'll say it.

I will die for the art & what I believe in. The art ain't always gon' be polite.

I would love to make lighter entertainments that have you sort of hopping and skipping and jumping out of the theater, but part of me just doesn't know how much I believe in that, as much as I want to.

I don't sing a song unless I feel it. The song don't tug at my heart, I pass on it. I have to believe in what I'm doing.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

I never gave up on country music because I knew what I was doing was not that bad.

I hope to live all my life for my art, without abandoning my principles one iota, without . . . having painted as much as you can cover with your hand, to please somebody or in order to sell the picture more easily.

A poet is no rattlebrain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says every thing, saying, at last, something good; but a heart in unison with his time and country. There is nothing whimsical or fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions, and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows of in his times.

When I read 'The Water Diviner,' I was having the same kind of visceral reaction that I would normally have acting in something. I believed that I was the only person that could tell this story the way it needed to be told. That's the real arrogance of a director!

'Unbelievers' was a song that we felt like we could tackle, so that's one of the reasons we wanted to start playing it live, we really believed in that song and we still believe in that song a lot.

Clearly the hardest thing for the working artist is to create his own conception and follow it, unafraid of the strictures it imposes, however rigid these may be... I see it as the clearest evidence of genius when an artist follows his conception, his idea, his principle, so unswervingly that he has this truth of his constantly in his control, never letting go of it even for the sake of his own enjoyment of his work.

I would have artists be convinced that the supreme skill and art in painting consists in knowing how to use black and white... because it is light and shade that make objects appear in relief.

I want to direct but I think I'd be bloody awful and I don't want to produce but I think I'd be a very good producer because if I believed in something I'd be able to protect it.

Sketching is almost everything. It is the painter's identity, his style, his conviction, and then color is just a gift to the drawing.

Belief of some sort is the lifeblood of Art.

Painting is a faith and that it brings with it the duty to pay no heed to public opinion - and that in it one conquers by perseverance and not by giving in.

I'm developed as an artist to accept the fact there are different points of view, but I believe in what I do and I have to stay with that.

I think I wrote the first draft of 'Nightmare on Elm Street' in '79. No one wanted to buy it. Nobody. I felt very strongly about it, so I stayed with it and kept paying my assistant and everything. At a certain point, I was literally flat broke.

I wrote poems. That is my work. I am convinced... I believe that what I wrote will be useful to people not only now but in future generations.

I felt so insufficiently equipped, so unprepared, so weak, and at the same time it seemed to me that my reflections on art were correct. I quarreled with all the world and with myself.

I don't really have guilty pleasures. Anything musically that I fully, fully believe, is good no matter who the artist is, no matter what the marketing is behind it, I stand pretty firm.

I have faith in my art.

I've seen 'Legend'. I like a different kind of cinema, but when done with conviction, anything looks good.