Quotes About Creativity

I'm very grateful that anyone takes the time to read what I write, coming from people perceive to be exclusively a musical background and having no traditional schooling in writing.

No artist wants to be perceived as a regurgitator.

Write for yourself, not for a perceived audience. If you do, you'll mostly fall flat on your face, because it's impossible to judge what people want. And you have to read. That's how you learn what is good writing and what is bad. Then the main thing is application. It's hard work.

I feel like a lot of people think of Hollywood as being fake, but it's only perceived that way because it takes 10 people to make someone look the way that they do. In reality, they're there because they are doing what they're passionate about.

Artists don't compare themselves to each other based on money. Nobody really knows what money other artists have. They don't care that much. The measure is the work and how you think your work is perceived. How the museums are. How you are doing.

We have this perceived illusion of what the fashion designer does. As an industry, we make it out that this one individual changes the entire face of the earth. I have never said 'me'; it's always 'we.' I am just the big salesman.

I just try and decide what I'm interested in and what excites me. I don't worry about how it's going to be perceived.

When you're young, and you're doing stuff, you're making music, directing, making art, it's all future directed. You want to change stuff onward. And when you get older - this applies to me - you think about the things you want to do and how it will be perceived by your children one day.

Writing is very much perceived as something distinct from performance. I don't see it like that.

I love art so much because of curiosity. At the start of a painting, I know 10 percent of what the painting will be, and then I have to improvise the whole thing.

I always claim that the writer has done 90 percent of the director's work.

The outline is 95 percent of the book. Then I sit down and write, and that's the easy part.

Probably 90 percent of my albums have polka medleys.

Ninety percent of the time when I'm working, there's this very palpable sensation that I'm doing everything wrong and should just give up.

All artists, no matter who they are, have always come into contact with criticism. No one's gonna like what you do 100 percent of the time.

I'm sure 50 percent of television ads use rhyme.

I believe 100 percent in the power and importance of music.

There's the same percentage of genius happening in both genders, but there's less women writing scripts and out there looking for the job.

Developing films with directors, developing films with actors, is a poor percentage play for a screenwriter.

I'm not thinking when I'm writing, 'How's this going to read?' Or, 'What percentage of the audience is going to stay with me?' The thing itself is what gives me pleasure. Sometimes stuff just falls onto the page so beautifully and happily that it's deeply satisfying. It's selfish!

A high percentage of each of my books has been written in Des Moines.

I don't think my music is that big of a deal - my entire life is parenting. The fact that I make records and go off and play shows is a small percentage of my day-to-day existence.

I don't know how to overcome this perception that I'm extravagant.

My synesthesia is mostly gone - it was a much bigger factor when I was a kid. But having no depth perception is a bonus when you're trying to lay out flat images and describe them to an artist - flat is all I see.