Quotes About Artistry

The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.

You know, for a long time I have been of the opinion that artists don't necessarily know what they're doing. You don't necessarily know what kind of universal concept you're tapping into.

I panic every time I put out a record. I think every artist does.

I just try to approach and serve the music in the way that I think is right for the band I'm in at the time.

Good music grows with age like a fine wine it's gets better and better over time.

Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.

The kids now are more productive than we ever were; they're a lot more prolific and productive in the sense that they have to have music out all the time.

I'll hear something in my head, then eventually play it. But it's a subconscious thing. Most of the time I really don't know what I'm playing.

I'm not one of those people who write all the time. Sometimes I'll go several months without writing anything. I'll sometimes second guess myself and wonder if I'll ever write another song.

I open myself up every time I walk on screen and give you everything that I am. There are parts of me that are in every movie that I've done. That to me is what my job is.

When I am making music, I am growing at the same time, ain't I?

If I'm in something that I think is kinda good, it stays with me like a fever dream for a long time afterwards. I don't recall the finished product so much as the feeling of making it.

A lot of the time I tend to overlook the music because I'm listening to how it's produced.

It does take a long time and a lot of paint to become our own artist.

My occupation is syncopation. But, every time, my syncopation is different, because I can never play the same fill twice. I just can't, never have been able to.

Any time you talk about the look of the film, it's not just the director and the director of photography. You have to include the costume designer and the production designer.

By the time I got to record my first album, I was 26, I didn't need pen or paper - my memory had been trained just to listen to a song, think of the words, and lay them to tape.

This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.

You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist. You can make the work a chore, or you can have a good time. You can do it the way you used to clear the dinner dishes when you were thirteen, or you can do it as a Japanese person would perform a tea ceremony, with a level of concentration and care in which you can lose yourself, and so in which you can find yourself.

Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right.

I also tell them that sometimes when my writer friends are working, they feel better and more alive than they do at any other time. And sometimes when they are writing well, they feel that they are living up to something. It is as if the right words, the true words, are already inside them, and they just want to help them get out.

You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander.

Think of a fine painter attempting to capture an inner vision, beginning with one corner of the canvas, painting what he thinks should be there, not quite pulling it off, covering it over with white paint, and trying again, each time finding out what his painting isn't, until finally he finds out what it is.

It is as if the right words, the true words, are already inside them, and they just want to help them get out.