Quotes About Artistry

Clothes are an amazing tool. They are an amazing way to hide a multitude of sins; they're an amazing way to be creative. Clothes can do so many things. But at the end of the day, if they don't serve you, it's just a waste of time. Then it is frivolous.

I was a magazine illustrator for many years before I became an actor, and I used to think, 'Oh, God, all those wasted years!' But now I think it's just been one big enterprise of illustrating. I used to do it with colored pencils, and now I do it with this voice and this set of limbs.

I used to be on the kitchen floor, crying, wasted and thinking of lyrics. That was the only way I could create - as a tortured artist. I've learned that you can be stable and taking care of yourself and still create beautiful work.

You can remember almost every Elmore James solo by heart because he was playing songs. Nothing's wasted. Nothing's throwaway.

We'd go to studios with ideas to do movie musicals and they'd literally kick us out. They said, 'Audiences aren't interested in movie musicals. You're wasting our time.'

For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business. He excites me when I watch him. He moves me. He's the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.

You can't stand at the Bellagio and watch these seven story fountains and not go, 'That's something of extraordinary man-made beauty.'

I don't ask other actors questions. I think that's too intrusive. I just watch. I don't want to be constricted to an idea of what acting is by anyone else. I want to take my own education.

It's a nightmare to sit and watch a film that I'm in. There's a horrible inescapability to it.

The best conversation with Stanley Kubrick is a silent one: you sit in a theatre and watch his films and you learn so much.

I like to choreograph and create and design the costumes and do it all and then step back and watch it and then move on to the next project.

As an audience member, I like to watch what they're doing, and that's one of the reasons I love skating: because it's a performance, and I love to perform. That's my favorite aspect of skating.

I think it's insulting to an audience to make them sit and watch a film and then give them a message in one sentence.

I had just been to the David Bowie Diamond Dogs concert, and I kid you not: When I watched him onstage, a lightning bolt came out of the sky and zapped me. I knew at that moment, that's what I wanted to do with my life. It was my calling.

I'm more prone to his '70s material, which is what I was around for and watched a lot. I listen to a lot of that stuff. It probably influenced me quite a bit. I'm more drawn to the darker, sadder songs.

Look at Greg Jbara! I've watched him work for years, always switching. He's literally a different human being when he's onstage in 'Billy Elliot.' That's the fun of what we do.

I've been fascinated by the world ever since I read 'Kitchen Confidential' by Anthony Bourdain. I've watched 'Top Chef' and watched interviews with chefs on 'Charlie Rose'... I thought they're really intriguing characters, and they really encapsulate that tension between vision and commerce, art and commerce.

I would spend hours absorbing every intonation, every inflection - how the singer would convey a sentiment and how it would sound coming out of their head. All of those things I very carefully watched and absorbed, and so I guess I was studying my whole life, although not in any sort of conventional way.

When I'm performing I just want to tell the audience something. I want every person watching to walk away feeling something.

I'm a secretive bastard. I would never let anybody watch me painting... it would be like somebody watching you have sex - painting is that personal to me.

Coming to Nashville has been so motivating and inspirational. Just watching people live and breathe their music and create something that they can feel from start to finish.

I love watching live shows from different artists from different stages of their lives. I'm always interested in the mastery of the live performance.

I grew up watching Marlon Brando, Christopher Walken, Robert de Niro, and Al Pacino and even Robert Duvall and was impressed by their caliber of work.

Anybody who dedicates himself to exploring the human condition, there's always a detached eye that's watching. In any situation, a little part of me is observing it, to see if there are any raw materials to create something else later.