Quotes About Artistry

For me writing and acting all comes out of the same place, a compulsion to review and connect to something. For me they are more similar than different.

I love working with people and having them bring something to the table that I couldn't. I think one of my favourite artists to work with has been Kucka. She's Australian, too, and it's great working with her because we kind of have a very similar take on music, and we like a lot of the same stuff. We're not super-precious about ideas.

It's true that writing and pastry-making are similar, but when you work as a pastry chef, you can get a kind of mania that everything you see is related to pastries.

Very similar experience happened last year when we released this album, North. It was on Deutsche Grammophon, it was very, very honest. It was the most honest record I've ever written.

I would love to be able to play some characters on television that are similar to some of the indie film roles I've done, that have been so close to my heart.

I love how music and fashion are so similar. We need each other.

My homes are similar in style because the same design principles run through all areas of my work.

Every department from the director to the art takes their time to set up, similarly as an actor it is your responsibility to take your time. Never be in a rush.

You see, I read reviews of people like Paul Simon, and they don't talk about the fact that he's looking old or whether he is fashionable; they talk about the music, which is how it should be.

Paul Simon is the king!

I listened to John Denver and Simon & Garfunkel. Edith Piaf was a huge favourite. Then I discovered musicals - I loved 'Les Miserables' - and, at about 14, I started listening to David Gray.

I love live theater. I get my rocks off by doing stand-up, and I am the only actor. But to show up eight times a week and not have that time for myself; to do someone else's lines? When I work for Wendy Wasserstein or Terrence McNally, Neil Simon or even Shakespeare, I do not have the right to change the lines.

I'm going to try and make you take the Beatles and Eric Clapton as seriously as the Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle.

When I was working on 'Night Falls Over Kortedala,' I was listening a lot to 'Graceland,' the Paul Simon record. I really got into the lyrics on that album. The opening line is so brilliant, the way he sets the scene.

The joy of puppetry is that it is very simple and low-fi, which I love.

I actually had publishers that would encourage me at times to keep it simpler, not pack in so much information, but I'm a fan of songs and movies and books that the second time you read them, you find more stuff that you missed, so I like to pay attention to that detail.

I look at making a record and being in a recording studio as more of a craft; You have to be so much more careful and play simpler.

For my own singing, I used to be attracted by the baroque, the flashier the better, but now I prefer a simpler, purer style.

As a writer, you're always trying to say the best thing. You're always thinking about what's the best thing to say, and what's the hardest way to say it, and what's the best line? Sometimes the best line is the simplest line. Sometimes the best line is the line that evokes more feeling than actual wordsmithing.

I think the key to writing hit songs is simplicity.

It's not easy to play in a framework that requires simplicity and to tastefully find ways to interject the kind of freedom that we have in playing jazz.

I saw a production of 'Titus Andronicus' at the Royal Shakespeare Company with Brian Cox back in 1987. That sort of rocked my world. It was a remarkable production in its simplicity and its realism and passion.

I could do beats with a million sounds, and I could do beats with two sounds. Which one is going to make the most sense, and which one is going to sell the most records? Most of the time, it's the simplicity.

I'm not someone who can do 10 stepovers or backheels - I'm not very interested in that. I'm more fascinated by the simplicity of play because the thing that makes this sport so beautiful.