Quotes About Creative

I wrote the screenplay for 'This Is Where I Leave You' - all 40 drafts of it.

My father was a screenwriter, and I kind of grew up in that world.

Being a screenwriter for a comedy, you're writing for characters in them in their voice. I could write anyone.

I have always aspired to be a writer, be it as an author or a screenwriter, whatever the medium.

I just want to work on good scripts.

I am doing films that are content-oriented and where I have the scope to perform. Rarely do such scripts happen.

I am open to writing more, and not just film scripts but maybe also a book.

I like owning my own narrative. It depends: I either give it all up, or I don't have any control. It's really hard to go halfway. Like with modeling, for example, I kind of give up all creative control, and that's just that. But when it comes to my own personal art, I'm very O.C.D. I see something a very certain way.

I've been accused, many times, as a writer/director, of my pace being too leisurely and too long.

If I could pick any story idea or script I had that I wanted everything to go exactly right for, it would probably be 'Pacific Rim.'

In general, I don't really think too much about pacing, myself. You kind of look at each script and what each script demands.

I love being a writer. I have a great life. I get up in the morning and pad around in my dressing gown and listen to Radio 4.

Writing is always a restorative process. It's like paddling a kayak. When you're writing, you can't do anything else. You're in the space you're in. So, in that way, it's enormously centering and restorative.

Sometimes I write less than I'd like but do research. Other times, editor's notes or a copy-edited manuscript or page proofs for a forthcoming novel mean that I need to put my attentions elsewhere for a day or two, but I always come back to writing.

Everything I write, I read aloud. It has to sound a certain way and look a certain way on page.

I wanted to be a writer, but the idea of writing novels or movies seemed really intimidating. I never got more than a few pages into one.

It takes me two to three years to write a novel. A screenplay is 100 pages and takes five years.

I eventually want to do writing on all the films, but not necessarily to be the writer. Writing is a painful, painful thing; it really is.

So I've tried to be this very eccentric character, and that works very well if you want to be a painter which I did once upon a time, if you want to be a musician which I did once upon a time. But if you want to make movies and you want to make challenging movies, you've got to be the sanest person in the room.

I started painting at 17; I took a class at Brentwood Art Center. I thought about art school - but I'm just so not a school person.

I feel like I became an artist by default. I went to art college, but my interest was always more towards film than painting or sculpture.

The painter... does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents.

I've always enjoyed the bohemia of Paisley.

Three and a half years in L.A. was enough for me. I would love to go back for short bursts if a film opportunity came up, but it's a unique place, and you can reach saturation point. For me it was a place where creative desire and ambition meets desperation. It's in the air; it's palpable - I just didn't want to be around that.