If heartaches was commercials, we'd all be on TV.
John PrineRead
I'll go to the movies and hear 'Angel From Montgomery' in some film, and nobody ever even told me about it. They don't tell you your stuff is going to be in a movie. They don't have to, so they don't tell you. You get paid eventually.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the surprise and unpredictability of an artist's work being featured in unexpected places.
John Prine's quote illustrates the bittersweet reality of artistic creation, where an artist can find their work acknowledged in the public sphere, such as in films, without being notified in advance. It touches on the notion that while artists are compensated for their contributions, the lack of communication about such recognitions emphasizes the often solitary and uncelebrated journey of creation.
Themes
ArtMusicRecognitionSurpriseFilm
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech at an artist's gathering, one might use the quote to convey the unpredictable nature of creative success.
More from John Prine
All quotes βOne time, I went to school, and they asked us all to find out where our roots were. It's goin' around the class, and the kids were going, 'I'm Swedish-German' or 'I'm English-Irish.' They got to me and I said, 'Pure Kentuckian.'
John PrineRead
I just tried to come up with some honest songs. What I was writing about was real plain stuff that I wasn't sure was going to be interesting to other people. But I guess it was...I've never had any discipline whatsoever. I just wait on a song like I was waiting for lightning to strike. And eventually-usually sometime around 3 in the morning-I'll have a good idea. By the time the sun comes up, hopefully, I'll have a decent song.
John PrineRead
I feel basically good about my career because it's remained constant. What I do has never been especially in vogue or gotten high on the charts. At the same time, I haven't had to stop performing any of my music because it aged in style.
John PrineRead
You know that first love that leaves you? You never forget that, especially if you're a songwriter. I must have gotten nine songs out of that girl.
John PrineRead
You get to thinking that because you've written 50 or 100 songs, you think maybe you know how to do it. But when they're not coming along, you're just as in the dark as you ever were. When they're coming along, there's nothing to it. Sometimes it's so easy, it's like you're a court stenographer.
John PrineRead
Similar quotes
The reality of the final moment, just before shooting [the scene], is so powerful that all previous analysis must yield before the impressions you receive under these circumstances, and unless you use this feedback to your positive advantage, unless you adjust to it, adapt to it and accept the sometimes terrifying weaknesses it can expose, you can never realize the most out of your film.
Stanley KubrickRead
The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you know the film you see in your head.
Mike NicholsRead
Provided we can escape from the museums we carry around inside us, provided we can stop selling ourselves tickets to the galleries in our own skulls, we can begin to contemplate an art which re-creates the goal of the sorcerer: changing the structure of reality by the manipulation of living symbols ... Art tells gorgeous lies that come true.
Hakim BeyRead
Unfortunately, moral beauty in art - like physical beauty in a person - is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.
Susan SontagRead
The poet, like the lover, is a menace on the assembly line.
Rollo MayRead
The yellow glistens. It glistens with various yellows, Citrons, oranges and greens Flowering over the skin.
Wallace StevensRead