Quotes About Artistry

Talent is a matter of quantity. Talent does not write on page, it writes three hundred.

I've always considered myself a filmmaker who writes stuff for himself to do.

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.

I feel like a lyricist is somebody that writes their own lyrics. Now songwriters and lyricists are two totally different things. You can't really be a lyricist if you didn't write your lyrics. There's no passion, there's nothing in it coming from you. It's somebody else's feelings and you just taking it and running with it.

I'm competitive with anyone who writes a good song - I don't care if it's a band or solo artist or whoever.

Most actors are starving. Most of us are walking around with a flashlight and tweezers looking for evidence. When you have someone that actually writes an acting role, it's rare.

I'm not a person who writes really abstract things with oblique references. I look at abstraction like I look at condiments. Give me some Tabasco sauce, some ketchup, some mayonnaise. I love all of that. Put it on a trumpet. I've just got to have the ketchup and Tabasco sauce. That's my attitude about musical philosophy.

I aspire to write like Robert Wyatt. I take a lot of inspiration from the way he writes.

I dabbled a little bit in the whole music thing but I've always thought about Bernie Taupin, who is Elton John's lyricist; Elton John is the great melody and song writer but Bernie Taupin is the one who writes all the lyrics. I don't write lyrics, and I never wanted to be in the music business if I was just going to be a puppet in it.

The painter paints, the musician makes music, the novelist writes novels. But I believe that we all have some influence, not because of the fact that one is an artist, but because we are citizens.

Everyone writes in Tolstoy's shadow, whether one feels oneself to be Tolstoyan or not.

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

There are so many separate selves; no one who writes creatively hasn't felt that.

When I'm the one who sits down and looks at the blank page and writes it out all the way, then I'll call it my script.

There's this idea of a star, and this person is very aloof and writes all the music, and they don't talk to anyone unless they go through the record label. And I always felt very uncomfortable about that.

A writer writes. Period. No matter if someone is buying your work or not.

There are so many remarkable playwrights working right now, that I see everything I can. Annie Baker is a genius, I'll see anything she writes. The same for Lynn Nottage, Cynthia Hopkins, and Lisa D'Amour. Anything they've got going on, I'll go see.

I don't write happy songs. Who does? I don't know anybody who writes happy songs, really.

If you're somebody who writes songs or writes fiction, a writer that people pay for your opinion in any way, you shouldn't be the least bit uncomfortable giving it to them. People want songwriters to tell them how they think and how they feel. That's what a song is. That's what I want to hear in a song.

I'm not somebody who carries around a notepad and writes songs all day long. I don't imagine everything I think of is worth being in a song. So I tend to collect notes, and I set time aside to go to work and write songs.

For anybody who writes, very often, when you finish an album, you are so done with it. You've been listening in minutia, in super-focus.

My brother plays guitar and base and writes. His name is Chase Ryan.

I'm the girl that writes feverishly in my tiny trailer on set.