Quotes About Creativity

I'm always nervous before starting a record because I can never sleep. I'm like, 'I have no good ideas, everyone is gonna see through me.'

I think when we were starting out, it was more about imitating our songwriting heroes. We would try to write songs like Neil Finn, or we would try to write songs like Ray Davies, or we would try to write songs like Glenn Tilbrook.

We always wanted to have this big show. So we just kind of started doing little things, like building our own little props, and starting to put on a show. And we just started seeing the response, and it felt amazing to us, and then I fell in love with it.

Every time I sit down in front of my piano, I like to improvise with the instrument. It depends on my mood of that day what kind of melodies and rhythms I am playing around. Sometimes, even before starting to play I already have a quite clear picture of a song I would like to compose, or at least the sound of it.

In 2011, I did an internship in Seven Dials, a junction in London where seven roads come together. I'd given up on writing after multiple rejections for my first novel, and I was starting to consider a career in publishing instead, but Seven Dials gave me such a strong idea for a setting that I couldn't resist picking up my pen again.

Although I was not a crafter before starting the business, I find it relaxing.

I think that one of the problems that jazz has is that it's so incestuous that it's starting to kill itself.

Don't bother starting the 10,000th restaurant in Manhattan. Find something to do that if you don't do it, it won't get done.

I love creating new things. It's difficult to be creative once a restaurant's open. People want the same dishes. For me, the creativity is in opening a new place and starting a new menu.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

Despite a few really bad days we had quite a lot of fun making Low, especially when all the radical ideas were making sense and things were starting to click.

The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.

I'd hate to be a songwriter starting a career today.

When you're starting out, you know, you have to do something on a very limited budget. You're not going to be able to have great actors, and you're most likely not going to have a great script.

It's rare that I actually have a story in my head. I have events or 'what's the next move?' Like, Maggie, 'where's she going to go in this story, where's she going to end up?' Then the story has to fill in the in-between, and that comes as I'm starting it.

But Contra la Puerta was done mostly in the opposite way, starting with sounds and melodies.

And then, I was thinking of doing a record just like starting with voice, because I did this one song that was just kind of a cappella, and I did it for this art piece I did where people could come and play music to go with a voice.

I'm starting to play all the melodies with kind of keyboard sound but playing it from the bass guitar.

I think what some people are doing with effects is starting to get silly. It's overused.

I was starting to feel really suffocated, using the sequencer.

Modeling can be a bit brain damaging. Starting my own brand was what I needed to do. I only model if there are such good jobs that you don't want to say no to. All that dressing up makes me say, 'What do I want to wear?' and, 'What do I want to do with Topshop?' It all kind of leads into the other things.

I think people are starting to think of me less as an actor and more as a writer.

If you're writing, you're starting in private. It can really be this amazing, private, freeing experience. Forget that it's for other people - that comes in later.

I've never let producers tell me what to do. Even when I was making television, I always did what I wanted to do, and if I couldn't, I didn't do it. It was a freedom that, these days, young directors starting out don't have.