Quotes About Artistry

Being behind the camera is where I feel comfortable. I've found something that I feel I, as 'Michael,' can be as confident in as 'Johnny' was on the stage. It's great being part of the creative process. You're right at the start of an idea, and you get to see it all the way through till the end.

Beyonce's the kind of artist where you're not gonna see it till it's right.

It's kind of a lonely work, because you just have to keep your pole in the water. I always had a little routine of going into whatever room I was using at the time to write in and just staying in there till I felt like I got a bite.

You can write music till you 70.

By the time I was 12, I had memorised hundreds of couplets. I could recite for hours poems written by others. I knew I could write a line in metre. But I never dared to do it till I was 33 years old.

For all my songs, I keep changing singers till I am not happy.

When I got to know about techniques, I realised there's a lot more to dancing than Bollywood. Till then, I had thought choreography simply meant doing your own steps.

Some people are great lyricists, but they're terrible at melody. But I could do melodies till the cows come home.

In terms of directors, great actors make directors - Gary Oldman was great to work with, for me; Tim Roth, too. You work with Scorsese and Spielberg and they were wonderful directors, but for me, working with actor/directors is special.

I'd like to do something with Michael Buble, Harry Connick Jr., Tim McGraw, Justin Timberlake, and Gwen Stefani.

I did see - and it really struck me - the late, great Tim Pigott Smith and Michelle Dockery doing 'Pygmalion' at the Old Vic. That was amazing. I remember being rocked to the core by that.

Probably the first artist who really captured me was Tim McGraw. His songs 'Don't Take the Girl' and 'Indian Outlaw' were fun, and he was different than a lot of artists.

Tim Burton - he's not exactly a subtle filmmaker. I mean that in a good way.

I have all the time and space in the world when I write a book.

'The White Album' is a record I can go back to time and time again, and always find something different that I never noticed or appreciated before.

What I did in '06 with 'Port of Miami' was classic for that era, for that time frame, and in 2017, 'Rather You Than Me' will be the same.

A lot of the time, people think rappers just live inside this bubble. No, the reality is there is conversation that happens. It's not this one-dimensional thing. There's reality that takes place.

You do a film for a short time period - you put it all out there and move on.

Hat-making is laborious and time-consuming. It's a very tactile medium, and you can develop the skills, but it's one of those things: you either have it, or you don't. I love bringing something to fruition with my hands that gives people pleasure.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don't want to perform a lot of my songs because they don't feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

I like songs that sound like classics. There are songs that might be cooler or have better production, but I like songs that sound like they're timeless.

The word 'fashion' I don't like because fashion is something that's over in six months. I'd like to find a word that's more timeless.

The songs of Raghavan Master are timeless. There are a lot of things that a student of music has to learn from them. He expressed his thoughts not through words, but music.

Pretty much at all times music motivates me. How can I say this without sounding in any way proud of myself? Obviously I've always written songs that are critical of our government, and talk about our times. Hopefully you attempt to be timeless while doing it.