Quotes About Artistry

'Epicloud' is the first record that I felt confident enough to include all those things on one record, so it goes between melodic hard rock to schizophrenic heavy metal to country to really ambient stuff, and it's all in one place.

Growing up, I was listening to a lot of Metallica, a lot of instrumental guitar music because I started out as a guitar player.

Writing a Metallica song is a journey and a process, and it takes time, but that's what's special about it.

I am a consummate metaphor addict.

It's like dance is a metaphor for going beyond where you think you can go.

I come from an era where lyrics were full of imagery and metaphor, and that's all I know. I think people miss that.

I'm more comfortable revealing myself than hiding behind metaphors. I respond to artists who reveal something of themselves.

I never think in metaphors or fully make those kind of associations myself. I just lay down a complex situation and hope things arise from that.

I find songs today very fake. I can't write according to the meter, but I can write from my heart.

I'm a method actress in my songs, which is why it's hard to sing them.

Most American actors are taught the Stanislavsky method... Method acting, but I really think that as an actor you have to develop what works for you. There is really not one way of doing anything. There are many ways of achieving the same goal.

People try to change up my method, but I'm gonna keep doing it the same way I've been doing it: going in the room by myself and making a song.

I don't shop beats. That was never my method coming up. I think it's very strange to have a CD of 30 or 40 beats and then just pick one.

One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.

I do not use any set methods, not even The Method. The character after all is in the lines.

I think going from doing TV and straight plays to Shakespeare is weird enough because you have this heightened language, and you are telling a story through metric poetry. But I think music is that place beyond poetry.

I wanted to infuse my music with Mexican character.

I made a living out of singing Mexican music.

A creative person has to create. It doesn't really matter what you create. If such a dancer wanted to go out and build the cactus gardens where he could, in Mexico, let him do that, but something that is creative has to go on.

If I'm not in the theatre, I'm in an open mic night or doing a guest set at the Comedy Club, or whatever, just trying to develop stuff.

I've done music since I would sit and make songs on my computer mic when I was 11.

I was born with a mic in my hand.

I can't imagine bringing in somebody else to direct my show. Wouldn't that be funny, if next season I had, like, Michael Bay come in and direct 'Better Things'? I wonder what that would be like?

You look at Michael McDonald and people like that; I think they just tried to write music that was true to themselves. That's our bottom line. Whatever people view us as, I think as long as we try to create good music that will win out in the end.