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" A painting has to be beautiful. Even in its grotesqueness. "
John Mellencamp
Painting
Even
Beautiful
Related Quotes:
" My grandmother made sure that I went to church every Sunday. And she'd come over and pick us boys up, and we would go to the Nazarene church. And back then, that was about as close to heaven as I ever got, because just the time to be able to spend with her, and she was very, very religious. "
John Mellencamp
Time
Sunday
She
" Music was so important to the culture when I was growing up in the Sixties and Seventies. We just expected that Bob Dylan was going to make a great record, and it was normal. It was like, 'Okay, here's another great record by Bob Dylan; here's another great record by Led Zeppelin.' "
John Mellencamp
Culture
Okay
Music
" It sounds funny, but I always try to keep an open mind about what I'm writing about. Sometimes I squeak my opinions in there, but generally I don't. I try to be objective about things that I'm writing about. "
John Mellencamp
Mind
Funny
Writing
" My best songs come from a place outside myself. "
John Mellencamp
Place
Best
Come
" I'm the guy who wrote The Authority Song. Did they think I was kidding? Did they think it was only a song to entertain? "
John Mellencamp
Who
Guy
Authority
" We had an exercise in speech class in school, impromptu speaking, that I was always real good at. "
John Mellencamp
Class
School
Good
" It's my responsibility as a singer-songwriter to report the news. "
John Mellencamp
Singer-Songwriter
News
Responsibility
" When people are afraid, they make emotional decisions. "
John Mellencamp
Decisions
Afraid
Emotional
" You cannot expect the guy who drove the car into the ditch to navigate it out of the ditch. You have to put a new driver in the seat. I'm not saying the new driver is going to be any better, but we need a new driver. Kerry is the only choice. "
John Mellencamp
Saying
You
Need
" I think it's ridiculous to try to sell records to teenagers, because teenagers don't buy my records. And there ain't that many teenagers out there in the marketplace. "
John Mellencamp
Ridiculous
Sell
Teenagers
" Natalie from the Dixie Chicks could have said what she said before 9-11 and no one would have cared. "
John Mellencamp
Would
Before
Could
" The CD, it should be noted, was born out of greed. It was devised to prop up record sales on the expectation of people replenishing their record collections with CDs of albums they had already purchased. "
John Mellencamp
Greed
Expectation
Sales
" Hanging out is a waste of time. The only time I would hang out was when I was a kid, I would hang out in the streets. But once I started making records, I stopped hanging out. "
John Mellencamp
Kid
Hanging
Time
" We could walk 3 minutes and be on the beach. I think the music kind of suffered because of it. It kind of smelled like Jimmy Buffett, which is a bad thing. "
John Mellencamp
Beach
Music
Think
" A lot of the time, I write in the third person, but I'm mostly describing my own ordeals. When those unsettled struggles prey on your mind, you become haunted. To get free, you must defeat your ghosts. "
John Mellencamp
Mind
Ghosts
Defeat
" I've just been fortunate to havehad a lot of hit records, though Human Wheels doesn't qualify as a hit record-but it's really the best single I've ever had. "
John Mellencamp
Single
Been
Best
" If we have any hope for survival of the music that we all love, compassion must replace name-calling, fairness must replace greed, and we need to come together as a musical community and try to understand each other's problems. "
John Mellencamp
Love
Community
Compassion
" When did Jimmy Stewart not play Jimmy Stewart? When did John Wayne not play John Wayne? But that's what we like about them. When you talk about acting, you really have to respond to somebody's personality. "
John Mellencamp
Personality
Talk
Play
" My task with 'Uh-Huh' was to make a more even record and get away from juvenile topics like 'Hurts So Good.' But I also knew if I wanted to continue, I had to have more hits. "
John Mellencamp
Good
Like
Away
" I want to sell to people my own age, because that's the way I write songs. "
John Mellencamp
My Own
Age
Way
" One quality of a good songwriter is to be vague. A vague notion, a vague image, but enough to give the listener the opportunity to make more out of what's being said than is there. That's the great thing about Bob Dylan's songs: We the listeners have made more out of them than he ever intended. "
John Mellencamp
Great
Good
Said
" What's the difference? One guy's the same as the other. "
John Mellencamp
Same
Guy
Difference
" 'Crumbling' Down' is a very political song that I wrote with my childhood friend George Green. Reagan was president - he was deregulating everything, and the walls were crumbling down on the poor. "
John Mellencamp
Green
Friend
Political
" Everything I have is for sale. Material items are just things that pass through your hands that mean very little or nothing. "
John Mellencamp
Everything
Hands
Nothing
" As I've matured as a songwriter, I realize that if it's out there, it's mine. "
John Mellencamp
Matured
Songwriter
Realize
" This cycle of make a record, tour has been going on for 20 years now. I don't even know why I do it sometimes. Do I need more money? Do I need more platinum and gold records? The only thing I can think of is ego. "
John Mellencamp
Know
Ego
Think
" People have the right to say what they want to. "
John Mellencamp
Say
Want
People
" I believe in something, even if it's just me. "
John Mellencamp
Believe
I Believe
Me
" All I'm doing is painting. It's my hobby. And that's that. "
John Mellencamp
Hobby
Painting
Doing
" I used to think that eating healthy was ordering a fish sandwich at McDonalds. "
John Mellencamp
Think
Fish
Healthy