Art & Creativity Quote by Aimee Mann

Mann is describing a particularly modern kind of artistic injury: not the bad review, but the endless, low-grade devaluation that makes creation feel like applying for approval. The line turns on a quiet power move. Faced with people who keep moving the goalposts ("not good enough"), she doesn’t argue for her songs; she withdraws her labor entirely. It’s passive resistance dressed as collapse, and that ambiguity is the point.

The phrasing "these people" is doing heavy lifting. It’s dismissive, yes, but also protective: a way to shrink an amorphous industry ecosystem (label notes, managers, gatekeepers, tastemakers, even the internalized critic) into a manageable antagonist. She’s not naming them because the dynamic is bigger than any one villain; it’s a system that asks artists to stay porous while it stays unaccountable.

Then comes the brutal self-awareness: "So my response was to just not be able to write anymore". Not "I chose to stop", but "not be able" - a psychological conversion of resentment into incapacity. It’s the body refusing to cooperate, the mind performing sabotage so she can’t be judged again. That’s why the last sentence lands: "I know that's not the healthiest of responses". She’s puncturing any romantic mythology of the tortured artist. This isn’t mystique; it’s a coping mechanism with a cost.

In context, it reads like a snapshot of the creative economy’s quiet violence: feedback as control, standards as a moving weapon, and silence as the only boundary left when the work itself becomes a hostage.