Creative Integrity Quotes

All I can do is focus on staying true to the style of music I write and sing because that is the only way it's going to come off as honest.

I don't think you should write a book until you tell the absolute truth. You can't do that until you're 85, and I don't want to live that long. I've always prided myself on knowing when to get off, and I hope it works out that way.

I don't really mind not being a part of a film - because if there is no part for me, I will never force myself upon a film. I feel like it's just a distraction. If it is not organically incorporated into the story, it just feels like a stupid appearance, like a sort of wink. I hate that.

You get a lot of who you are as a musician across through the music you write. If you're writing your own music, then it's important to be really honest.

I know how to make a record that commercial radio or Triple J will smash now... It's kind of hard to stay true and write what you would write if you didn't have that in your head. Because I know I can get way more airplay and get this much bigger... and that's what I'm trying to avoid doing. Trying to avoid the poisons of success.

I've always believed that getting respect as an artiste is of utmost importance.

After my years in Hollywood, I got tired of apologizing for work that really wasn't mine to begin with.

Artists need support, time and money to develop their ideas, and if people rip stuff off, you don't have to be that brilliant to figure out that you're ultimately going to affect the end product.

Our music did not sound like the Beatles in any way, shape or form. I could never find it in myself to use those Beatles tricks in Styx records because they were sacred to me. But what they did always influenced my thinking.

I am a sensitive writer, actor and director. Talking business disgusts me. If you want to talk business, call my disgusting personal manager.

I respect the audience's intelligence a lot, and that's why I don't try to go for the lowest common denominator.

The challenge artists face today is whether to be an underground, unheard genius, or to dilute their art for the marketplace.

Everything that I design I would wear myself.

I decided that if my work contained what I could identify as a likeness to other work, I would remove it.'

To be honest with my music... for me to expect anyone to connect it has to come from a place of honesty.

I don't want to sell my soul to Hollywood - to just make run-of-the-mill stuff.

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

If something appeals, something appeals. I don't think I'm particularly calculated about it. I know I have an alarm bell that goes off in my head where something feels like it has no creative integrity to it at all, and it's just about making money.

I have been in 'Star Wars' since I was 20. And they're not just doing some goofy sequel, like, to service the hunger of it. It actually has been thought out and it has integrity and they took it seriously, which they didn't have to do, you know? It's hard to do, given the appetite and the angles from which everybody's coming at it.

Whether it's a huge hit or sold five copies, as long artistically and creatively I can stand by what I did, then I'll feel successful.

Some say I'm an overnight success. Well, that was a very long night that lasted about 10 years. But while I do, of course, now feel the pressure having had books that have been very successful, I just know I have to concentrate on writing for myself. I can't worry about genres or markets or what might be commercial or not. That never works.

In my opinion, trying to guess what readers want is the wrong approach. You have to tell your story as best you can and as true to yourself as possible. You have to be honest and fair and vulnerable and foolish and brave, and not care what anyone thinks of it.

I wanted to only create a great perfume, not any perfume that would sell, but a great artistic one that the fans would not feel cheated by.

I would hate to make music and people love me for something that isn't me.

Doing interviews about my films really bothers me sometimes, because I have to speak directly and clearly about things I've intended to keep ambiguous, and in a way, I feel like I'm betraying my film.