Top 60 Frank Ocean Quotes

I don’t intend to stop making music.

I can operate in half-a-song format.

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I’m watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they’re painted, could be art. With music, you’re a little bit limited, of course, because it’s only audio.

Here’s what I think about music and journalism: The most important thing is to just press play.

I can’t usually stomach a project after I finish it, but for those days and weeks and months that it’s new to me, I do listen to it, and it might change over time, but it’s about function.

You can’t think; you just gotta do things.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

I never think about myself as an artist working in this time. I think about it in macro.

I’ve always wanted to make a career in the arts, and I think that my only hope at doing that is to make it more about the work.

It’s more interesting for me to figure out how to be superior in areas where I’m naive, where I’m a novice.

When you write a song like ‘Forrest Gump,’ the subject can’t be androgynous. It requires an unnecessary amount of effort.

I make pop culture.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people.

I had writer’s block for almost a year.

I grew up in New Orleans. I had just moved into my dorm at the University of New Orleans, and I was doing laundry, and my mom called me, like, ‘We’ve got to evacuate. There’s a hurricane’s coming.’

The idea of recognising your strengths and using them in as versatile a way as you can is cool to me.

The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too – eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko’s, Fatburger, Subway – I was a sandwich artist – and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.

It’s hard to articulate how I think about myself as a public figure.

I worked my face off.

People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.

A friend of mine jokes that I have a painstaking royalty complex. Like maybe I was a duke in a past life.

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know.

I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go-to form of communication. And I knew I could sing from being in tune with the radio.

I wrote ‘Channel Orange’ in two weeks. The end product wasn’t always that gritty, real-life depiction of the real struggle that happened.

I’ve written some great things. That’s a gift, but there’s consequences. Yeah, you get this great work, but you suffer. You really, really suffer.

I might just write a novel next. I don’t know!

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know. And writing Langston Hughes replica poems became me wanting to write like Stevie Wonder.

The work is the work. The work is not me.

There’s just some magic in truth and honesty and openness.

I was a thug.

I play piano every day. I enjoy that.

I’m in this business to be creative – I’ll even diminish it and say to be a content provider.

I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

I want to thank The Beatles for almost single-handedly getting me out of writer’s block.

You gotta make sure the listener is listening to you, so if you put it into a song, often times, if the song is striking enough, then you can really deliver the story most effectively while keeping the ear of the listener the whole time.

I believe that I’m one of the best in the world at what I do, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.

Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited – that has music and rhythm and time.

I hope not to define myself by suffering.

I guess I’m just inspired to tell stories.

The Internet made fame wack and anonymity cool.

Sometimes I’m fascinated with how famous my work could be while I’m not so famous.

I’m about being the best.

I’m big on what’s in good taste.

Because I’m not in a record deal, I don’t have to operate in an album format.

Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.

It’s cool to be recognised by your peers.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

We were poor. But my mom never accepted that. She worked hard to become a residential contractor – got her master’s with honors at the University of New Orleans. I used to go to every class with her. Her father was my paternal figure.

I like the anonymity that directors can have about their films.

I respect Drake not only as a creative person but as a business mind as well. I think Drake’s important.

I’m not a centerfold.

This has always been my life and no one else’s, and that’s how it’s always been since the day I came in it.

It started to weigh on me that I was responsible for the moves that had made me successful, but I wasn’t reaping the lion’s share of the profits, and that was problematic for me.

As a writer, as a creator, I’m giving you my experiences. But just take what I give you. You ain’t got to pry beyond that.

I have no delusions about my likability in every scenario. I know that in order to get things done the way you want them, oftentimes your position will be unpopular.

Art’s everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.

As a lifestyle you always being the focal point is innately unhealthy.

The Internet is just another experiment showing us more sides of us.

It’s not essential for me to have a big debut week; it’s not essential for me to have big radio records.

I think we all change each other’s paths. I don’t know which law idea that is in physics, but I don’t think any of us can live without affecting one another.