Artistic Obstacles Quotes

'Anthem' was the record that almost didn't get made for a completely different reason than 'Underneath.'

Nature always resists the artist at the beginning.

It's expensive to get studio space and dancers. My whole first three years, I was sneaking around in the studios and getting kicked out of them. It was kind of depressing.

I want a painting to be difficult to do. The more obstacles, obstructions, problems - if they don't overwhelm - the better. I would like to feel that I am involved at any stage of the painting with all its moments, not just this 'now' moment where a superficial grace is so available.

Many artists give up after a while.

There's no such thing beneath the heavens as conditions favorable to art. Art must crash through or perish.

Trying to film a movie on a diet is hard enough, I can't imagine how it would be on drugs.

But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into a haze. Characters cannot come alive and fight and guide the world unless the novelist wants them to remain characters.

Making movies seemed so impossible as far as getting my ideas funded.

Ease is the enemy of the artist. When things get too easy, you're in trouble.

Songwriting is hard - it's so easy to fall into the same traps. It's not like I wake up and songs flow out of me.

When you're an actor, you can be hindered by your own narcissism.

But you talk to most filmmakers and it is six, seven, eight years trying to get things off the ground. It is incredible really.

If you are a young writer today, it's very hard.

In art, women could never get training. They couldn't get their work out into the world even when they could get training.

'Teenage Dream' was the most difficult song I've ever been a part of. We wrote five different versions of it. We couldn't get the lyrics right. Max Martin and Dr. Luke wrote most of the melody, and then Katy Perry and I were responsible for getting the lyrics right.

I wasn't trained as a writer-director. And the projects I write are difficult to finish.

I find it some of the hardest photography and the most challenging photography I've ever done. It's a real challenge to work with the natural features and the natural light.

When you're young, you sort of have an idea that this is how it's always gonna be as a filmmaker. And then you have the ups and downs of trying to get your art created in an industry that doesn't traditionally make films with you and people that look like you behind the camera.

As authors, we're all trying to fight against obscurity and outside distractions, but it's a tough battle.