Artistic Courage Quotes

The effort to see things without distortion takes something like courage and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he saw it for the first time.

I'm often asked how I shoulder the responsibility of films, but I've always believed in taking risks.

I'm saying nobody's got the guts to be a J. Cole. Nobody's got the guts to be a Kendrick Lamar. We need more of them... Everybody wants to go the easy route.

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

Each single gesture of art must be daring. One must not be concerned with the side-effects.

An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.

The songs that you start to write that you are a little scared of can be the ones that you have to tell.

The important thing is not what we write but how we write, and in my opinion the modern writer must be an adventurer above all, willing to take every risk, and be prepared to founder in his effort if need be. In other words we must write dangerously

An artist should be taking risks. That's the whole idea of being an artist.

I could play a gig on the moon and not be nervous about it.

N.Y. hip-hop is ok, but we gotta become brave again; we have to be brave enough and do something new - that's what New York is about... New.

Art should walk a tightrope. That's what art should be. Art should be dangerous. You can't be scared to say something with it. People love to talk about how comics are real art and real literature, so why not use these characters to talk about real things, even if it is dangerous?

Poets and painters have the power to dare, I mean to dare to do whatever they may approve of.

All art is an intensely vulnerable gesture, and it is made with no small amounts of risk, and fear. So, I have plenty of sympathy for self-defense mechanisms, especially among artists.

While I hope that people like my work, I don't think an artist should be afraid of ­people not liking his work.

Vivien Leigh was a phenomenal actress, a very complicated woman, living on the edge of mental problems, haunted by demons and angels. And though I've never thought of myself like Marilyn Monroe, I was inspired by the tremendous risk she took - of being vulnerable.

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

If I didn't start singing in the cabarets and on my albums, I could have never even tried something like 'Capone.'

I believe that art has been a vehicle for me that's been about enlightenment and expanding my own parameters, to give me courage to exercise the freedom that I have in life.

I think Ryan Gosling is a really great actor who's meticulous about his work. And I'd love to have the guts that Johnny Depp has to actually go outside the box on a character. When he plays a character, he plays it in a way that nobody else would.

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

A great artist has to be ready to fail.

And I hate to see artists who are real safe. I love to see artists swing for the fences sometimes.

The hardest things to do in any art is to risk failure and put yourself out on the line.

I've never played it safe on my own music.