Quotes About Inspiration

I think people like Bill Gates, who have given away enormous sums of money, are shining examples for all of us to follow.

All I'm really interested in musically is trying to make concept albums. Serving a larger sum than the parts.

Get to the point where the songs sum it all up, and creatively, I'm just like, 'This is it.' I've also learned how to be patient and not really try to overproduce anymore. I used to add instruments, keep adding instruments, but nowadays - I know better now. I know how to let the track breathe.

It's a lovely moment when everyone's part of something greater than the sum of its parts. That encapsulates what a comedy gig should be, with the comic as the lightning rod, the Norse mischief god, getting the audience to do something they wouldn't necessarily do.

In an ideal world, as a director, you usually wish you could do your own thing and not have to take anyone else's point of view into account, but occasionally you work with someone like Robyn, who brings a new set of ideas to the table, and the whole ends up much greater than the sum of the parts.

In a studio context, the music becomes greater than the sum of its parts. When you have collaboration, you have other people's strengths that I don't share, so my song can get stronger.

We've always said Psychic TV's music is the sum total of who's in it at the time.

Steve Allen was on Johnny Carson one time - I looked for it, but I couldn't find it - and he read the lyrics to 'Hot Stuff' by Donna Summer like a poet. He read them very seriously. I was maybe 8, but it killed me.

I read Henry Miller's 'Nexus,' 'Sexus' and 'Plexus' the summer after I graduated from college. It cemented my decision to spurn any and all careers.

I didn't dream about being a director. I didn't know I wanted to do something with film until the summer between my sophomore and junior years at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.

'Red Hook Summer' is another chapter in my chronicles of Brooklyn.

One summer I remember, I got exposed to Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly and Buddy Holly was a very very big, made a very big impression on me. Because of a lot of things, you know, the way he looked and his charisma.

I am hoping to film another ad in the summer for Carte Noire.

There is absolutely no doubt that the extraordinary Donna Summer belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I started working with Special Olympics when I was 17 years old. I'll never forget the first time I did it: I was at Weber State, and it was the summer before I started school. We have to get up in the morning and do this Special Olympics camp.

I spent the summer of '88 indoors, writing 'Shoot You Down,' 'Bye Bye Badman,' and 'Don't Stop.'

I very much looked up to Janet Evans and Summer Sanders.

I spent a whole summer working on what proved to be 'A Game of Thrones'.

A person can do a lot of reading and research as I have done. I went to Spain and spent a whole summer there with my family, immersing myself in the culture. But all that isn't really necessary to experience the music.

I read 'Jaws' and 'The Godfather' back to back one summer when I was 14 and was suddenly aware of how powerful fiction could be.

In 1987, I had no idea who Steven Isserlis was. We met at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. It was originally just an Italian summer festival, but for the past 14 years, there's also been a spring festival in America.

'Saturday Night Live' was actually started with a show that Lorne Michaels and I did at a summer camp called Timberlane in Ontario when we were 14 and 15. We would do an improvisational show with music, comedy and acting.

It's been a dream of mine to run my own summer camp. I went to one as a kid, and I put on productions, and got lots of confidence.

Law school and summer camp are the two experiences that inform pretty much all I do.