When we started Aftermath, we had something like 20 artists, and it was driving me crazy. I couldn't sit down and focus on any of it. Plus, it was doubly hard because you ended up crushing these people's dreams when you had to let them go.

If anything, Twitter helps me read about perspectives outside of mainstream media and learn about new authors, artists, and ideas that I don't always get exposed to in my regular media diet.

I really appreciate artists of the 20th century, and I can see a lot of their influence on my work, but to suggest that my design only fits within an 'ism' kind of bothers me.

Marc Jacobs is full of creative people and Louis Vuitton is again a name on the door, a name that has existed for many years but I'm a collaborator there and I bring in other people, other artists and I work with a great creative design team.

People think Selena and The Weeknd are dating for publicity, and that's not how things works. These are real human beings. They don't just date to get more famous. They're already the most famous artists!

I've always been inspired by artists who have shown musical and intellectual curiosity and the courage to take risks.

When you're a Chicago artist, to play Lollapalooza, that's not a normal thing. It's artists on a path to a certain place that do that. Chief Keef did it; Kids These Days did it; Cool Kids did it. And I'm the next Cool-Kids-Chief, if you will.

I think it's really cool when artists have song titles or album names that are a really conversational sentence.

I don't care about being a pioneer. People act like it would be cool to be a pioneer. I'm okay to be looked at as that, but it's just that we don't get transmitted our cultural heritage as women artists.

When I had a record deal in the '90s, that was my dream - to make an album like Barbra Streisand's Broadway album - and they laughed me out of the room. Broadway wasn't cool. But artists like Michael Buble and Josh Groban have brought the classic genre back to the forefront, so I'm trying to find my way inside that market.

Sometimes you have the trends that's not that cool. You may have certain artists portraying these trends and don't really have that lifestyle, and then it gives off the wrong thing. And it becomes kinda corny after awhile. It's really about keeping hip-hop original and pushing away the corniness in it.

I don't have to work with superstars - I want to work with cool artists that make super music.

I'm taking a lot of my favorite artists, different people, my favorite music and marrying that with what I do as a comic. It's very collaborative, arty, fun and cool.

It's cool to see a bunch of brown kids in the crowd. I wanna be a brown artist that they look up to. I didn't see that many artists with my same culture that I looked up to when I was growing up. The industry has always been whitewashed.

In Hollywood, they think drawn animation doesn't work anymore, computers are the way. They forget that the reason computers are the way is that Pixar makes good movies. So everybody tries to copy Pixar. They're relying too much on the technology and not enough on the artists.

I'm pretty much a dinosaur in the studio. I like things hand-drawn, even today. The story artists use Cintiqs, but I'm the only person who hasn't completely converted to computers. I like the Cintiq, but there's something about the raw emotional power of using paper and pencil.

I think music should be free. I think all communication should be free. I think people should respect artists, and there should be a certain respect for artists who give their music away for free.

The idea of an animated film is you always kind of get a little bit daunted by it as a filmmaker because it feels like a lot of your communication is going to be with computer artists, and you're going to have to kind of channel the movie through extra pairs of hands.

The new artists coming through were very materialistic and Hollywood, not so engaged in communication.

I see so many activists... who are artists because they feel that they have the power of communication.

Over the years, I've heard pop artists do some Christmas songs, and I haven't fully cared for them. They weren't the traditional Christmas music that I was raised on and love. Thinking of that, I wanted to make my songs mimic the classic Christmas songs.

Metamorphosis has always been the greatest symbol of change for poets and artists. Imagine that you could be a caterpillar one moment and a butterfly the next.

I really like Kendrick Lamar. I'm still a Talib Kweli fan, Lupe Fiasco, Mos Def, Common Sense - people who say things that are relevant to everyday life. I don't pay attention to artists that talk about throwing money away and the car that they drive.

I think musicians and artists are the most philanthropic people I know. Their charity record of the music business would hold up to the work of anybody.