Indie Quotes & Sayings

I had a little indie label called No Core and Dave Grohl's first band was called, Dain Bramage so I out an album for them and for whatever reason, he's never forgot it and has always been super nice to me since. — Reed Mullin

I'm not really interested in the audience's enjoyment,' Cave mumbles once he has changed into clean pants. 'It doesn't bother me one way or another. I just don't give a shit. People feel more and more disappointed with each concert because less and less happens. It's really easy to suck an audience in. Like, I can wiggle my bum and back-flip on my head and they love it. I could make an audience love me until the end of my days. There's just no point in it any more. I wish they'd just ... die. — Antonella Gambotto-Burke

I would love to be able to play some characters on television that are similar to some of the indie film roles I've done, that have been so close to my heart. — Courtney Ford

I found my way into the indie world a bit late in my career, but it was something that I was really passionate about doing. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

What can we expect from this latest crop of indie directors who have been sucked into the franchise factory? I'm especially curious about 'Star Wars,' which will feature an all-indie crew after J. J. Abrams finishes with 'Episode VII.' — Annalee Newitz

I retired from acting the same time they stopped hiring me. But following my own thing of making these small indie movies has been the happiest I've ever been. — Bobcat Goldthwait

It's funny how books can change you. You open up a book and one minute you are who you've always been, then you read some random passage and you become someone else. — Brian Joyce

Although erotica authors are being targeted, this is an issue that should concern all indie authors. It affects indies disproportionately because indies are the ones pushing the boundaries of fiction. Indies are the ones out there publishing without the (fading) protective patina of a "traditional publisher" to lend them legitimacy. We indies only have each other. — Mark Coker

If I could split myself into five people, I would still be behind on my writing schedule. I see now why James Patterson cloned himself so many times. — Peter James West

This is the truth that sets you free: you are who you commit yourself to being, you have what you commit yourself to having, you live as you commit yourself to living. — Anthony Chapman

The record company doesn't know what to do with me, because I'm not a Lily Allen, but I'm not really an indie artist, either. All the best artists have been in the middle. — Bat For Lashes

I am not great in a crowd. I don't see a lot of rock shows because sometimes I am afraid I won't get out. I used to squeeze my little self into the scrum and jump around and cause tiny trouble. Now I just want to sit down and have someone perform my five favorite songs while I eat a light dinner and receive a simultaneous pedicure. Is there some kind of awesome indie/alt/hip-hop/electronica music tour that can do that? — Amy Poehler

Smash market vs. mass market: Indie authors delve deep into expressive vertical genres. Book stores hold 90-day-credit-return literature. Why wait? In five years, Indie authors will be both. — Peter Prasad

I'm dying to do a tiny indie and play something totally naturalistic without any sort of constraints on me. Something where I can shock everyone. — Lily James

It was the freedom to experiment that made this experiment called Freedom possible. — Justin Sirois

We often hear of a male director directing a great indie and immediately being offered the next huge comic book movie. Rarely, if ever, does this happen to a woman. — Lesli Linka Glatter

INDIE AUTHOR= A writer growing, learning, developing their trade-set based on skills they are acquiring along their journey. (They are not in training or less professional. They are simply working with their own allowances of income with financial support far from the more broader publisher's stature to try to produce the best quality of work for you the reader.) — Eri Nelson

Writing ain't easy, support your indie author & write a review! — Ben Jackson

Mal Blum's arrival on the indie scene gives us all hope for the future of smart music. — Melissa Ferrick

All writers and their readers should stand up and voice their opposition to financial services companies censoring books. Authors should have the freedom to publish legal fiction, and readers should have the freedom to read what they want. — Mark Coker

Indie music is 'it' now. It's kind of a revolution to the music: 1980s, 1990s music was getting very sanitized; they were complying with the music industry. Music was getting more and more dead in a way. Now, because of the social climate that's very severe, the artists are compelled to start being real. It's really great that indie music is now. — Yoko Ono

Generally, an indie film in the U.K. is put together much like in the states. We got a tax credit. You sell the domestic rights, which can be quite low, but it's enough to push you over the line. And you get a tax credit on top of that, and then you cobble it together with private equity or gap financing and things like that. — Noel Clarke

You won't find the tales I bear in any books ... My tales are from the Moon Realm. - Ebb Autumn — Richard Due

This is our most complete record by far. A Hundred Million Suns sounds like the marriage of everything we learned from the Jeepster years and the Fiction years made into something new and bolder. Our spikiness and our indie-ness are coming through again with all the poppiness of the last two records. There's a lot of melody here and you can't cloak that whatever you do with it. This album is touched by our entire history, and hopefully sounds like our future too. — Gary Lightbody

In the old days, a TV sync was perceived as not so cool or whittling away at your indie cred. Now it's seen as much more of an opportunity than a sellout, as a way to find fans who wouldn't have ordinarily come across their genre of music. — Alexandra Patsavas

When I was a teenager, I went to Europe on a backpacking trip by myself, and I met a woman who was following Sebadoh. It was the early 1990s, and that was my introduction to indie rock. — Jenny Lewis

Some people are just sad when there aren't talking squirrels. - Lily Winter — Richard Due

I think indie films are really important, because they show the studios and the audiences when they see them, great stories. Really interesting, small stories. — Sigourney Weaver

What is on that memory stick, if you don't mind me asking?"
She was following him back into his apartment when he asked, and realized she still clutched it.
"Something I never want to see again. — Pixie Lynn Whitfield

And so many of the indies have partnered with Google to sell ebooks right from their own websites. These stores are embracing the "new technology" instead of hiding from it, because they realize it's about the story, not the ink on paper. If you want ebooks, your local indie can sell you ebooks. If your local independent is hanging up posters saying that ebooks will kill everything, you should tag that bookstore as a favorite in your GPS doohickey. You'll get great deals, because that store will have a going-out-of-business sale soon. Yes, even though you try to save it with a letter-writing campaign. — Steve Weddle

There are moments in our lives that define the people we will become in the future, like a symptom before an ailment, or the catalyst before the cure. — Brian Joyce

To go indie is a thing. But to put an album in the stores, you need a distribution label. — Drake

There's an indie movie I did called 'Fat Kid Rules the World,' which was based on a teen book, and it's a fabulous story, and hopefully it'll go to theaters because it is an amazing story. — Lili Simmons

People always try to make self-published authors feel insignificant. I have more respect for self-published authors, because I know the adversity they faced. They didn't just write a manuscript, query letter, and blam book deal. These authors had to do it the difficult way. There is no publisher, or agents, investing time, and money into making their book. Just the indie author's manuscript, own currency, and persistence. — Mary Sage Nguyen

There was no indie rock band in the 90s at the level of, like, Grizzly Bear. I listen to their records and it's crazy how good they sound. That really freaks me out. — Travis Morrison

I'm excited that 'The Good Guy' is getting distribution because indie movies they're not - people ran out of money and they're not making these movies anymore. It's all superhero movies or real obvious tent pole studio films. — Bryan Greenberg

When we opened Babbo, we were an indie band. Now we're kinda Apple. We have 19 restaurants and 2,800 employees, we are no longer perceived as the indie band although we think of ourselves as the indie band, and we operate our restaurants as individual indie bands. — Mario Batali

You are at the mercies of the dailies. With an indie you don't have that. — Dianne Wiest

Content is King. Promotion is Queen — Bob Mayer

If I had followed every urge I ever had, I would have had much more sex and killed a lot more people — Tommy Cotton

Indie bookstores love writers as much as they love readers, and there is something about a community store, where you walk in, you feel known, and the delight in books is just infectious. — Caroline Leavitt

Even the shows or movies that we know are not going to change the world, I love this. I love 'em. I'm a movie fan. I'm a nerd of any kind. I love a big studio comedy as much as I love the teeniest tiniest of indie. I'm not a snob in that way. I really do like a big, big studio comedy. — Kathryn Hahn

I love going to theatres and seeing honest little indie films I know nothing about ... being surprised by a beautiful film I had no expectations about but just got lost in. I'd like to do more well-written indies. I don't know exactly what my dream role will be yet, but it's somewhere within that realm. — Laura Mennell

I am an indie kid. I made no bones about the fact that I fell into DJing electronic music by accident, by a lucky break, but it doesn't make me any less of a fan of that music, I just never envisaged ... not through a lack of confidence or belief, I just didn't think that I'd be sharing the bill with people that I was going out to see myself. — Erol Alkan

It's just interesting that people don't really know about the roles that I play that are darker. I kind of do a huge blend of really big light things but also really dark indie things, and it just sort of happens to work out that way. — Brittany Snow

I guess it was only fitting that to them PUNK was a four letter word. However, to people like Dylan and I-punk was our hearts-our souls. We grew up with a lot of uncertainties. To be a teenager isn't always pretty, and our music reflected that. — Brian Joyce

I have a day job Monday to Friday. I work at a record label in Brooklyn called Ba Da Bing. It's a great indie label and I listen to music all day. I meet people online and find out about the cool new music blogs. — Sharon Van Etten

I lived in London for a long time, and that's a pretty white town. In Toronto, I just ended up in this circle of indie rock kids who happened to be white, too ... Really, it was just when I started getting out there and meeting more people and seeing more fans that I went, 'Oh, actually, I'm not white.' — Bryan Lee O'Malley

Sometimes I want to do something that's really funny and other times I read an indie script that is going to be made for nothing but I want to do it because I think that I can connect with something in the story. — Brittany Snow

Indie film isn't dead, it just grew up. — Kevin Smith

A part of me is a liberal New Yorker involved in politics and certain attitudes about movies. I kind of lost my indie credibility over 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith.' I know I haven't lost it. I just have to go make an independent movie. I just have to do it. Just for me. — Doug Liman

They said I was a married mother of two but the record sounded like an indie album and they didn't know how to market it! This country is incredibly sexist, as is the music and media industry. — Siobhan Fahey

If I like hardcore straight-edge punk music, gentle psychedelic folk music, gangster rap, indie-rock with a lot of guitar pedals, and I find inspiration from all these things in different songs of mine, shouldn't I be allowed to make any of this kind of music that I want? And it's the same for the comic books, why should I only make autobiographical stories? Or only political stories? Or only superhero stories? Or only comedy stories? I am a bit creatively desperate, when I sit with a pen and paper I am desperate for ANY idea that makes me excited, I don't care what kind of idea it is! — Jeffrey Lewis

I'm not going to say I'm not a fan, but I'm a fan of house music, essentially, and kind of indie, and I was always into the kind of sub-pop Seattle Mud Honey and Pearl Jam kind of sound. But my kind of big love was house music ever since I was 15/16, going to raves when I was 15 or 16 years old and not going to school, like a naughty boy. — Nick Frost

Before the whole Disney realm had undergone this huge revamping, as a kid, I always saw myself doing these dramatic indie parts. And then I fell in love with doing comedy and doing kid shows and really working for kids. — Debby Ryan

Fuck you. You think this is a scene in some indie drama you take my wife to in the Village, some pack of lies the guy at the Times said was so naturalistically performed. But in real life? We're bad actors. We're slobs who actually hurt. You don't feel it, you couldn't, but the pain you're causing us - causing my family - it's destroying our lives, what we have together. What we had. — Andrew Pyper

In times such as these, life often begs us to seek answers when in reality there are only questions available. — Brian Joyce

Nowadays, the Internet decides if you're good, not the big man in the big office. No matter how important that man thinks he is, everyone else knows that he's not important anymore, and the Internet decides these things, here in the modern age. — Alexei Maxim Russell

I was, a near grown man, sat in his dank, dark and rickety digs, feverishly hovering about the glare of a computer screen like a disorientated moth, one searching for a flaming light of recognition from someone/anyone! — Tom Conrad

I really just wanted to work on adventure games, so Pinkerton Road is our own little indie studio that's focused on that. — Jane Jensen

But - " yelped Twizbang, "Greydor will eat us! — Richard Due

The most profound, life-altering gift you can offer the Indie writer you love is to TELL as MANY avid readers as you are able. — R.S. Guthrie

They praise these tiny indie bands, but if a band finally gets mainstream success, the same people who praised them attack them for 'selling out.' People often play at being nonconformists to mask their own feelings of not fitting in. — Kyle Baker

I think indie films have more of a fresh, experimental vibe about them, whereas studio films know what they want and can basically get it. — Kodi Smit-McPhee

There are movies that I love tonally, that I would love to emulate. Anything from Wes Anderson or the Coen brothers is right in my wheelhouse, as something that I would aspire to. I love that kind of indie, fun, colorful, funny, sweet, heartfelt but dark film. — Sam Huntington

Writers can write whatever they want, but after THE END, when they self publish their book, they become accountable to readers for the quality of the book they're selling. — Eeva Lancaster

I think as long as there are folks on the fringe who want to make movies, the indie scene will still be around. I do think it's getting harder to get them seen though. — Joshua Leonard

The good thing about the studio is that, when the movie comes out, they will put their marketing and their money behind it, which isn't necessarily true with indie movies, just by the nature of it being an independent film. — Jamie Linden

I don't want to be 'box-office girl,' but I don't want to be 'that indie girl' either. — Kirsten Dunst

...I tried to pretend that what we were enacting was nothing more than an intricate kind of handshake." ~Malcolm — Kathleen Maher

When I was designing, I had in mind Jimi Hendrix, and I could hardly find skinny indie black kids to wear my clothes. I remember one telling me he had to swap his skinny jeans for baggy ones in the subway before going home, so he wouldn't get in trouble in his neighborhood. — Hedi Slimane

Words raced thru his mind and his fingers ached to capture them all on paper. — Eveli Acosta

Society gets by from the help of its citizens. — Brian Joyce

We grew up listening to alternative music from the '90s, and there was no shame in being on a major label and still making the music you wanted to make. I feel like rap rock came around and drew a line in the sand, and everybody that was like me ran away from that and started making indie-rock. — Nate Ruess

Popularity is like a girl in class that you can't ignore. She give you eyes when no one looks then turns to her friends and laughs some more. — Brian Joyce

Try being an indie author, a minority author, a woman, and a person with health issues in the world of traditional - that's where you are clearly 'different' and marginalized. I am all of that, yet I am still here and smiling. Life is good! — Kailin Gow

Not everyone will like what you write but there's a certain group who'll love what you write. Keep WRITING for them. — David Chuka

Why do I love writing YA? Because I get a chance to re-live my youth knowing all I know now ... — Belle Whittington

I think the indie-rock world is very creative. They're always looking for something new, and I think of all the instruments we have in the world, the ones that are the most creative and interesting are the electronic ones. There are so many sounds and plug-ins you can use. — Tiesto

If you want to succeed in indie publishing, be prepared to work your ass off and demonstrate patience. Writers who aren't willing to do those two things will fail. Period. — Sean Platt

I believe in Mexico there's a big culture of moviegoing, both studio and indie. I think here in the US that's not the case because Latino communities don't have access to indie films. If you go into communities of color you will only find the big theater chains which only play the blockbuster genre films. — Aurora Guerrero

If you can still write in spite of the fact that you're not getting paid, that nobody cares about what you're writing, that nobody wants to publish it, that everybody is telling you to do something else, and you still want to and you still enjoy it and you can't stop doing it ... then you're a writer. — Joanne Harris

I knew that I tend to always gravitate to the indie side of things. — Aaron Paul

When I lived in New York, there wasn't as much TV or film around. I got asked to do a couple of indie films, just based on me being from The Smashing Pumpkins and A Perfect Circle. I did a couple of indie movies from Japan and one from Canada, and I thought it was an exciting, fun thing to do. I had a great time doing it, it was just that, in New York, there really wasn't as much. My studio in New York closed, so I moved out to L.A. and just started looking into composing as another thing to do, as a musician. I like it a lot. It's fun and it's a different way of thinking about music. — James Iha

When I first put out music, people didn't know what I looked like. They called it a new type of something; they couldn't put a genre on it - it was where indie and urban kind of meet in the middle. I thought that was quite exciting. — FKA Twigs

I was kind of going that route with my country music. Indie country. Which would work, if I was playing on Americana stages. Unless I had a television outlet like 'Glee'. — Laura Bell Bundy

Licensing is how indie rock people make a living these days, so whatever about that. But I want good films and good placement for the songs because I want to be exclusive. I don't want to just sign it away because I don't want songs to lose meaning, but I'm also ... I don't care [that] Wilco sold songs to Volkswagen. That's great. They probably drive Volkswagens. — Justin Vernon

In the 1960s, it took months before someone figured out they could sell tie-dyed shirts and bell bottoms to anyone who wanted to rebel. In the 1990s, it took weeks to start selling flannel shirts and Doc Martens to people in the Deep South. Now people are hired by corporations to go to bars and clubs and observe what the counterculture is into and have it on the shelves in the mall stores right as it becomes popular. The counterculture, the indie fans, and the underground stars - they are the driving force behind capitalism. They are the engine. This brings us to the point: Competition among consumers is the turbine of capitalism. — David McRaney

Hip-hop is mostly what I listen to, other than jazz. I've given up on pop music and indie rock. — Jess Row

It's wonderful to be appreciated for being quirky, and to see Zooey Deschanel and the quirky, indie film types get mainstream play is amazing for women, because women are much more complicated than what we've see on TV in the past. — Mayim Bialik

The American indie underground made music for like-minded people who thought for themselves. Thinking for yourself is intrinsically subversive. — Michael Azerrad

One of the best moments of any Liars show is hearing the crowd squawk 'We're doomed! We're doomed!' on cue during 'We Fenced Other Houses with the Bones of Our Own.' Maybe not the most uplifting audience sing-along in the indie rock world, but one of the most reliably entertaining. — Rob Sheffield

I love indie record stores, man. I love anything that's about independence and preserving the brand of good music. — Raheem Devaughn

I criticized the whole American songwriting industry and the pop side of it and I was bitter about it. And I stepped back and thought 'Why are you bitter? You can't just stand there like every other indie musician and criticize this so-called 'generic' music when you're not doing anything to challenge that.' — Marina And The Diamonds

Slamdance actually is indie and rebellious. Sundance obviously felt threatened. — Yony Leyser

We like to believe that we live in a grand age of creative individualism. We look back at the midcentury era in which the Berkeley researchers conducted their creativity studies, and feel superior. Unlike the starched-shirted conformists of the 1950s, we hang posters of Einstein on our walls, his tongue stuck out iconoclastically. We consume indie music and films, and generate our own online content. We "think different" (even if we got the idea from Apple Computer's famous ad campaign). But the way we organize many of our most important institutions - our schools and our workplaces - tells a very different story. — Susan Cain

I'm an indie artist with major distribution, so one foot in the extreme major music business and one foot in the abyss of indie artists. — John Oates

I always feel I could be like Toni Collette, going between big studio things and indie films. That would be feasible. — Chloe Sevigny

If it weren't for Criminal Records, Wax-n-facts and other indie record stores I could have only sold my CD's at my shows and by mail order as an independent artist. The greatest stores that have character and include a much wider range of music of music are all independent, mom and pop stores. — Shawn Mullins

All you needed was a couple of instruments and a few chords and you could be on an indie label. — David Byrne