Quotes About Artistry

I swear, I have not played 'Dare Iz A Darkside' damn near since I did it. Seriously!

When I first started working at Disney animation, I can't tell you how many people said to me, 'Oh, man, take a powder.' Nobody takes animated musicals seriously. I swear.

At a personal level, I rather like it if you can create characters and storylines that don't have to rely on being crude and swearing.

I am an actor, and although I love music, and at times can't live without it, I eat, sleep, breath, sweat, and bleed acting.

After that, I specifically started writing lyrics. I would like sweat and think and get it all together.

I like people that can strap on a guitar and don't sweat the fact that you have to come up with a song in an hour. I want to work with someone who won't feel like they have to play along with Jason Molina. I want them to just have the confidence.

I sweat on stage a lot.

An artist or a writer can boast about working for himself, but it would be highly irresponsible of a director to say such a thing as the sweat of many people is involved in realising his dream and he should respect that.

When I made dog sweaters, as goofy as that was, I made this product, and people could buy it, and I got money immediately. Music was just this ethereal land of maybe, a lot of waiting and waiting. You live your life around hoping you get a five-thousand-dollar royalty check that usually doesn't come.

I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did, and I get the sweats, I go in and start working, I'm not sure where I'm going.

Sometimes you can feel the gears shifting in scripts, like really trying to make something work that feels sweaty for whatever reason. I really enjoy reading material that just flows - it's definitely a skill to make something feel effortless.

I like to say that I do covers of my own songs. And I have about a dozen bands all over the world. That's no exaggeration. I have a South African band, an Australian band, Swedish bands, English bands, American bands. They're all notable musicians, too.

When I play the clarinet, I am 100 percent myself. It is as if it is part of my body. I can play whatever I think. Let me just read a melody and make it as sweet as I can.

When I heard BB King's 'Sweet Sixteen,' I knew I wanted to play bass because that was the thing that made that record: the bass player.

I would find myself in these photo shoots with models and makeup, and I got swept up in it all.

Maybe it goes away, but this is the way I've chosen to live: I want to go down or rise up as an artist. I don't want to get swept up in lipstick or whatever the hell.

Some people might go to the gym and swim laps, but I write songs. Every single day, I write something new and record it.

I feel like I've got this great catalogue of songs sink or swim, it doesn't matter. If you've got that, you've got a lot.

When I played Gollum in 'Lord of the Rings,' if I was climbing up the side of a mountain, which I physically did, you know, I was on every single occasion swimming through streams, all of that, that wasn't captured. That was filmed on 35 millimeter, and for certain of those shots, it was rotoscoped and painted over.

I love swimming, and when I'm choreographing something I'm in the studio dancing all day, every day.

In film, if you've got to do a scene in a swimming pool, you do a scene in a swimming pool. If you've got to blow up a car, you blow up a car. In theater, you can't do that, and therefore, you have the opportunity to engage the audience's imagination in a way that's rich.

I'll do a cappella stuff, rock 'n' roll and swing stuff.

For some reason, the concept of writing with swing chords was intimidating.

As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.