Authentic Art Quotes

I believe that music is connected by human passions and curiosities rather than by marketing strategies.

Every authentic work of art is a gift offered to the future.

I just want to be an artist that makes exactly what he feels.

When I approach my music and my music videos, obviously all of the subjects and stories that I tell come from an honest, truthful place and the experiences that I've had.

I just sing the stuff that makes me smile, makes me feel like I didn't sell myself out.

I like real art. It's difficult to define 'real' but it is the best word for describing what I like to get out of art and what the best art has. It has the ability to convince you that it's present - that it's there. You could say it's authentic... but real is actually a better word, broad as it may be.

If I thought that any poem of mine could have been written by anyone else, either a contemporary or a forerunner, I should suppress it with a blush; and I should do the same if I ever found I were imitating myself. Every poem should be new, unexpected, inimitable, and incapable of being parodied.

For me, it's always an organic process. I don't personally reach out to artists without the music being created first.

An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all.

Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity - and I don't mean simple - it'll be good, and the public will know it.

If you stay true to your ideas, film-making becomes an inside-out, honest kind of process.

The judgment of music, like the inspiration for it, must come slow and measured, if it comes with truth.

I'm putting everything on the line in being able to express myself in a different way than rappers normally do. They might say, 'It's rap' or 'It's R&B,' but I'm stepping outside the box and making music for me and making music for the fans to understand me. I'm going the extra distance to be able to come across different.

I don't like listening to music that isn't real.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

A work of art contains its verification in itself: artificial, strained concepts do not withstand the test of being turned into images; they fall to pieces, turn out to be sickly and pale, convince no one. Works which draw on truth and present it to us in live and concentrated form grip us, compellingly involve us, and no one ever, not even ages hence, will come forth to refute them.

I think expression is at it's best when it comes from an honest place, so I always try to use my own life experiences, feelings, struggles, frustrations etc. as the catalyst for my song writing.

I still believe that the best art - be it music, comedy, painting, etc. - is the art that hasn't been asked for, or is expected.

My music is not for everyone. It's only for the stong-willed, the [street] soldiers music. It's not like party music- I mean, you could gig to it, but it's spiritual. My musi is spiritual. It's like Negro spiituals, except for the fact that I'm not saying 'We shall Overcome.' I'm saying that we are overcome.

Painting is always strongest when in spite of composition, color, etc., it appears as a fact, or an inevitability, as opposed to a souvenir or arrangement.

Robert Frost had always said you mustn't think of the last line first, or it's only a fake poem, not a real one. I'm inclined to agree.

We've never written anything to have success with it. We've written songs that we love.

I know that my son was an honest person and an honest artist, and what he gave from himself through his art was the depth of his humanity.

But I can't and don't ever want to write bell-yanking confetti-tossing hat-throwing poems.

I love to write honest songs that name real people, then get up onstage and live out those emotions in front of 15,000 people.