Quotes About Artistry

Writing, when it works, one needs to access whatever it is that creates dreams.

I am putting every effort toward creating my works from morning till night on every single day.

It's such a strange marriage, a song and someone that sings it. When that works, it really works, and when it doesn't, it doesn't.

I think I've got it pretty easy compared with somebody who works at a desk nine to five. I'm just working for an hour in the evening. I get a bit breathless, as I have to talk non-stop because of the puppets.

In the early part of the '70s, we had glam rock, but we also had reggae and ska happening at the same time. I just took all those influences I had as a kid and threw them together, and somehow it works.

I've never been about just trying to do what works. I've been about trying to authentically express how I feel.

I would have preferred to be successful here with a piece that cost me a huge amount of money and effort... rather than sending to Bohemia some ordinary works.

'Mad Fashion' follows the everyday workings of me and my workshop, where we make fashion, costumes, props, and couture!

I collect puppet stuff. I have a puppet workshop in my garage. I was looking for any opportunity to be able to get very creatively involved in that world.

My teacher Tom Spanbauer, the man who got me started writing in his workshop, used to say: 'Writers write because they weren't invited to a party.' That always struck so true, and people always nod their heads when they hear that. Especially writers.

I tell my workshop students, 'I want you to think of yourselves as artists. Then, when you're writing, you're painting, you're crafting, you're making a design, you're sculpting, you're creating choreography, sound, a sound script.'

I think people who are creative are the luckiest people on earth. I know that there are no shortcuts, but you must keep your faith in something Greater than You, and keep doing what you love. Do what you love, and you will find the way to get it out to the world.

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.

I am consciously not trying to bring in World Music elements. The ways that I work and feel are completely different in how they sound than someone playing the Kora in Africa would play it.

World music can be sometimes like the lumber room in which all the non-English singers are dumped. When you are singing in Arabic, no matter what your style of music or artistic proposition is, you are faced with some of that reality.

One of my problems is I'm not really sure if I slot into rock or not. I've always tried to combine world music, folk, jazz, blues and rock, and have done since Traffic.

When you are busy with all the live shows and bands, world music and jazz music, it takes time to come back and do a pop album. It needs its own length of time.

Being a director or a conductor is a balance of many things. And to do it right is a very difficult tightrope to walk. I've come to the conclusion that there's really no way to be one hundred percent popular as conductor.

Singing bel canto is like walking on a tightrope - especially with a larger voice like mine.

People say that wrestling is not ballet. But as a former ballerina, I'd like to see some of these men put on a pair of tights and go do what a dancer does. Because it's a lot! It's definitely difficult.

Till now poets were privileged to insert a certain proportion of nonsense - very far in excess of one-half of one per cent - into their otherwise sober documents.

All we do as songwriters is rewrite the songs that have impressed us till we find our own voice. It's part of learning the craft.

I like to leave a film open-ended, with a lingering feeling. I'll not do sequels of any of my films till I have subjects to explore.

I'm heavily involved in the creative with choreographer Christopher Scott. I go to rehearsals with 'Glee' and then practice with LXD till about midnight.