I can safely say that I had an incredibly difficult and trying past growing up and trying to be an artist and standing up as who I am in this world.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
This image of wanting to be an artist - that I would in some way become an artist -was very strong. I knew for a long, long time that that's what I would be. But nothing I ever did seemed to bring me any nearer to the condition of being an artist. And I didn't know how to do it.
I found the most difficult thing when you became successful - when I had the record album, it won Album of the Year - that you were cut off from the source of your material. Your material was everyday people, and you were kind of cut off from that, and you had to work at it.
There's so many parts of my life that I've struggled with - that so many millions of others struggled with - about being an outsider, about feeling ugly, about having to overcome looking different to other people.
My desire to be an artist really came out of being broke and unemployed and incapable of holding a job down. That's what it was driven by for sure.
Something in me was instinctively drawn to the life of a misunderstood, brilliant and wilful artist. I wanted to become one.
I always knew that I was an artist. I never expected to be able to make a living.
One of the biggest obstacles I've overcome in my life was thinking I didn't deserve to be successful. Artistically I'm not as much of a heavyweight as someone like Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell, because I'm not a creator of original music, and I worried about that for years.
I wanted to be a painter, really, when I was growing up as a kid. It was one thing that really took a grip on me.
My growth as an artist and a person has been so slow and gradual, it's hard to make a story out of it.
When I was growing up, I wanted to be a house painter like my father, but I was always screwing up when I went to work with him. I had a talent for knocking over paint and painting myself into corners. I also realized fairly quickly that painting bored me.
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