Uncompromising Art Quotes

I was taught never to compromise: to never sing a cheap song. I never look down at the audience and think that they are ignorant or think that I'm more intelligent than they are. To think otherwise is totally incorrect and runs contrary to everything I was raised to believe.

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

Ain't nobody making music to not be heard and the easiest way to be heard is to be on the radio, but you should never compromise who you are, your values or your morals.

A true artist never portrays to please, but to show.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

Really I've just gotta be making really great music that I love and not worrying too much about what other people are gonna think about it.

An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.

Our music doesn't make many compromises, but we take it into a venue that's larger than people expect.

For me personally, Elliott Carter was and remains one of the most meaningful composers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries because he represents substance. He was the living proof of uncompromising, complex music, which at first seems inaccessible. But it becomes accessible if one digs in and sees the development through.

The real artists are ultimately people who don't consider their audience and are almost incapable of considering their audience. They can do what they do and fire themselves up.

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.

My vocation is more in composition really than anything else-building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army. ... I always felt if we were going in to do an album, there should already be a lot of structure already made up so we could get on with that and see what else happened. ... I always believed in the music we did and that's why it was uncompromising. ... I don't think the critics could understand what we were doing.

I don't write for an audience, I don't think whether my book will sell, I don't sell it before I finish writing it.

At the evident risk of seeming ridiculous, I want to begin by saying that I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously. I hope this isn't too melodramatic or self-centred a way of saying that I attempt to write as if I did not care what reviewers said, what peers thought, or what prevailing opinions may be.

Your favourite songs by your favourite bands are never the singles. It's when they've done exactly what they wanted without any compromise and not worried about the reaction.

What was exciting to me in talking to Kogonada was I was just very convinced that he was a very real and pure artist. He was so uninterested in the commercial game.

And that's what the audience was feeling too, as they watched the show and as they watch it now. And overriding all of that is the way it was written. It was written honestly. There was never any manufactured laugh. There was never compromising of character.

I've never stopped making new music, and whether the audience wants to hear it or not, I'm going to play it. Because I'm an artist, and I create, and I've got new stuff.

Robert Gober, for example. He doesn't seem like somebody who is just going to show in a gallery that asks him to show. He's just making his work, and when he's ready, he's going to show it.

If you want to be a serious writer, then you have to write what there is to write about. If you're going to pull your punches and second-guess yourself and not do things because you're worried, then don't write. Stay home and do something else.

I've never made a movie to make money. I've never made a painting to make money.

As a director, you never think about how an audience would respond. You can think about that, but you will never change what you're going to do.

Always have one artistic thing that is pure, at least one thing, where you don’t compromise. You can do other things to make money, but have one pure area.

Art is something to be proud of. Art is no compromise.

I don't do 'political correctness,' whatever that means. I write the stories I want to write, featuring the characters I want to feature. I don't touch demographic bases to appease this group or that. I write what I want. Full stop.