Thom Yorke Art Quotations

My argument would be that I don't think there is much that's genuinely political art that is good art.

Obviously, the duty of artists is there, but it's more an indictment of the political system that someone like Zinn views artists as the seers, idealizing them as the people responsible for inspiring change.

If there are political programs on TV, yet it takes an artist to actually energize political debate, that tells you something really quite frightening about the level of the political debate happening on mainstream channels - right-wing-biased mothers.

My heart is a weatherballoon caught in an updraft of a chinese tax percentage, the tax percentages are unequivocaaaaaaaaaal, Unequivocaaaaaaaaal. This is the sort of lyrics you could never think of, loser. Here's a razorblade go cut yourself

Maybe I'm not the gloaming witches smart, but at least I'm not our stupid liffey hamburger mongrels

And I'm sorry for us The dinosaurs roam the earth The sky turns green

Coming from Britain, I was terrified of meeting all these other artists, because artists over there tend to fight with each other a lot, the premise being that there's not enough room for everybody.

I'm not a martyr, just a musician who dies for your sins. Oh, that's what a martyr is? Very well then, I am a martyr, if you insist.

I think no artist can claim to have any access to the truth, or an authentic version of an event. But obviously they have slightly better means at their disposal because they have their art to energize whatever it is they're trying to write about. They have music.

I sometimes have birthday parties for the kids in my neighborhood and then pretend to suggest that I am going to molest them to the parents. It's a hilarious prank even though I am not a paedophile.

So ultimately, it's idealistic to think that artists are able to step away from the power of the media and the way it controls things, and go on doing their own things.

It is difficult to make political art work.

Remember that Cosby show where he harrassed the children? Well I put on a little suit and because I am so small they invited me on but nobody was laughing at my jokes. I guess I'm just, too, particularly smart for them.

I think artists can influence only through making music that challenges people, excites them and flips them out. Music that repeats what you know in ever-decreasing derivation, that's unchallenging and unstimulating, deadens our minds, our imagination and our ability to see beyond the hell we find ourselves in.

One of the interesting things here is that the people who should be shaping the future are politicians. But the political framework itself is so dead and closed that people look to other sources, like artists, because art and music allow people a certain freedom.