Quotes About Creativity

A conviction, unformulated but strong, rose to the working level of her mind - that painting did something more important for Nicholas than the mere gratifying of a whim; that this form of work and liberty of expression straightened out in him something that was tangled, set free in him something that, shut up, turned bad and poisoned him from below.

and I shambled after as usual as I've been doing all my life after people that interest me, because the only people that interest me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yearn or say a commonplace thing ... but burn, burn, burn like Roman candles across the night.

But I've come to realize writing's not a noble calling. Like you said, it's all about marketing, isn't it?

Writers were like parasites, preying on other people's stress and misery. Objective observers like spies or detectives.

Sometimes she'd scream at him, laughing but irritated too. 'How can you just sit there? What is going on inside your head?' He was never quite sure how to answer. Stories, he thought. I just tell myself stories.

It seems to me that in the western world, culture has something to do with appearance. A person that's out creating good stuff has got to appreciate someone when they take the time to have an appearance that goes with what they're doing.

Germany has great skill levels, great infrastructure, high-quality plant. If you go to the U.K., we're very creative, and we've got the language, but energy costs are pretty much the most expensive in the Western world; pensions are pretty expensive, and the skills are significantly below those in Germany and the U.S.

I haven't written a score that's going to change the Western world or the musical as we presently know it.

If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you're going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

It was quite frightening to be asked to write the music of a Western because there are so many things that you can refer to that can be cliche, and that could really poison your mind, from Morricone, to Bernstein, to Neil Young. So much music has been written for Westerns, that you wonder how you're going to find a new or different idea.

I made over forty Westerns. I used to lie awake nights trying to think up new ways of getting on and off a horse.

When I did 'Bird,' it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn't in it and second because most of the films I'd been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me.

Mel Brooks is an interesting one because he started out making films about stuff that he was totally affectionate about, like musicals, westerns, horror films, Hitchcock films. And then, as they get further on, and you get to 'Spaceballs,' then it's just kind of contrived.

Studios, because they are investing a great deal of money in movies, they want a guarantee that when they hire somebody that person can deliver for them. Everything is fear based, so they pigeonhole people. But I've written everything, from Westerns to sci-fi to dramedy, I've done it all.

When you're young, you want to make every kind of film: musicals, Westerns, horror. Slowly you begin to hear your own voice. I hope people receive what I do as small, personal films that are somewhat contrarian about their main characters.

The impetus for 'The Sisters Brothers' was it occurred to me that there was no neurosis in westerns, or there's a minimal amount of it.

I do feel that I need to do at least one more Western - I think you need to make three Westerns to call yourself a Western director.

You don't get to make Westerns every day.

Even 'Bonanza' was derivative of other westerns and, of course, other westerns were derivative of 'Bonanza.'

If you scroll through all the movies I've worked on, you can understand how I was a specialist in westerns, love stories, political movies, action thrillers, horror movies, and so on. So in other words, I'm no specialist, because I've done everything. I'm a specialist in music.

There have been several Duchesses of Westminster but there is only one Chanel!

My main camera is a Nikon D3. I use a French camera from the 1800s for wet plate photography, I use a Hasselblad sometimes. But to me the camera really doesn't matter that much. I don't have a preference for film or digital.

If you cannot catch a bird of paradise, better take a wet hen.