“As long as your intentions are solid and about growth and progression and being productive and not being idle, then you’re doing good in my book.”
― Frank Ocean
“You just do what you can and you have as much fun as possible.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.”
― Frank Ocean
“The Internet made fame wack and anonymity cool.”
― Frank Ocean
“There’s just some magic in truth and honesty and openness.”
― Frank Ocean
“I hope not to define myself by suffering.”
― Frank Ocean
“In art, at a certain level, there is no ‘better than.’ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.”
― Frank Ocean
“You can’t think; you just gotta do things.”
― Frank Ocean
“I was a thug.”
― Frank Ocean
“In art, at a certain level, there is no ‘better than.’ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.”
― Frank Ocean
“I wrote ‘Channel Orange’ in two weeks. The end product wasn’t always that gritty, real-life depiction of the real struggle that happened.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.”
― Frank Ocean
“The Internet is just another experiment showing us more sides of us.”
― Frank Ocean
“My grandfather was smart and had a whole lot of pride. He didn’t speak a terrible amount, but you could tell there was a ton on his mind – like a quiet acceptance of how life had turned out.”
― Frank Ocean
“Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.”
― Frank Ocean
“Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.”
― Frank Ocean
“I’m extremely compassionate, loving, all of those warm fuzzy things, but the outer shell doesn’t project that all the time.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.”
― Frank Ocean
“Of course awards matter.”
― Frank Ocean
“Art’s everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.”
― Frank Ocean
“People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.”
― Frank Ocean
“Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.”
― Frank Ocean
“We all know we have a finite period of time. I just feel if I’m going to be alive, I want to be challenged – to be as immortal as possible. The path to that isn’t an easy way, but it’s a rewarding way.”
― Frank Ocean
“I won’t touch on risky, because that’s subjective. People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.”
― Frank Ocean
“A friend of mine jokes that I have a painstaking royalty complex. Like maybe I was a duke in a past life.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.”
― Frank Ocean
“How we experience memory sometimes, it’s not linear. We’re not telling the stories to ourselves. We know the story; we’re just seeing it in flashes overlaid.”
― Frank Ocean
“The work is the work. The work is not me.”
― Frank Ocean
“I’m big on what’s in good taste.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.”
― Frank Ocean
“It’s more interesting for me to figure out how to be superior in areas where I’m naive, where I’m a novice.”
― Frank Ocean
“The idea of recognising your strengths and using them in as versatile a way as you can is cool to me.”
― Frank Ocean
“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?”
― Frank Ocean
“I don’t have any secrets I need kept any more.”
― Frank Ocean
“When I was growing up, there was nobody in my family – not even my mother – who I could look to and be like, ‘I know you’ve never said anything homophobic.’ So, you know, you worry about people in the business who you’ve heard talk that way. Some of my heroes coming up talk recklessly like that.”
― Frank Ocean
“I want to thank The Beatles for almost single-handedly getting me out of writer’s block.”
― Frank Ocean
“I don’t ever want to be caught up in a system of thinking I can do one thing ‘cos that’s just… that’s just telling yourself a lie.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.”
― Frank Ocean
“I make pop culture.”
― Frank Ocean
“All in all, I just don’t trust journalists – and I don’t think it’s a good practice for me to trust journalists.”
― Frank Ocean
“In the studio, we adhere to a strict colour code. Developed over decades, the colour code consists of a finite and precise colour palate… The whole world as we experience it comes to us through the mystic realm of colour.”
― Frank Ocean
“When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‘No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.’”
― Frank Ocean
“I need to know how many records I’ve sold, how many album equivalents from streaming, which territories are playing my music more than others, because it helps me in conversations about where we’re gonna be playing shows or where I might open a retail location, like a pop-up store or something.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.”
― Frank Ocean
“I’m about being the best.”
― Frank Ocean
“As a lifestyle you always being the focal point is innately unhealthy.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.”
― Frank Ocean
“I might just write a novel next. I don’t know!”
― Frank Ocean
“I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.”
― Frank Ocean
“It’s about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness – sonic goodies.”
― Frank Ocean
“I don’t fear anybody… at all.”
― Frank Ocean
“I enjoy singing my songs in front of people.”
― Frank Ocean
“I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.”
― Frank Ocean
“I don’t intend to stop making music.”
― Frank Ocean
“It’s cool to be recognised by your peers.”
― Frank Ocean
“I’m not a centerfold.”
― Frank Ocean
“I play piano every day. I enjoy that.”
― Frank Ocean
“I like the anonymity that directors can have about their films.”
― Frank Ocean
“Here’s what I think about music and journalism: The most important thing is to just press play.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.”
― Frank Ocean
“I never think about myself as an artist working in this time. I think about it in macro.”
― Frank Ocean
“I’m in this business to be creative – I’ll even diminish it and say to be a content provider.”
― Frank Ocean
“I worked my face off.”
― Frank Ocean
“Sometimes I’m fascinated with how famous my work could be while I’m not so famous.”
― Frank Ocean
“I guess I’m just inspired to tell stories.”
― Frank Ocean
“Super-envious of the fact that Daft Punk can wear robot helmets and be one of the most famous bands in the world, while also understanding that will never be my situation.”
― Frank Ocean
“I’ve gotten used to being Frank Ocean.”
― Frank Ocean
“Because I’m not in a record deal, I don’t have to operate in an album format.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.”
― Frank Ocean
“The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?”
― Frank Ocean
“When you write a song like ‘Forrest Gump,’ the subject can’t be androgynous. It requires an unnecessary amount of effort.”
― Frank Ocean
“I can operate in half-a-song format.”
― Frank Ocean
“My music definitely comes from a place of experience. Everything connects to a truth.”
― Frank Ocean
“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.’”
― Frank Ocean
“I respect Drake not only as a creative person but as a business mind as well. I think Drake’s important.”
― Frank Ocean
“I had writer’s block for almost a year.”
― Frank Ocean
“It’s hard to articulate how I think about myself as a public figure.”
― Frank Ocean
“It’s not essential for me to have a big debut week; it’s not essential for me to have big radio records.”
― Frank Ocean
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