Quotes About Creativity

Songwriting is an art unto itself, not to be confused with performing.

In my mind, I'm no longer daunted by the idea of a remake. In fact, I now look at it as a genre unto itself - so long as you make it your own.

Every Dirty Projectors album is a world unto itself.

An obsession with untold stories is a source of energy.

I have been an unabashed fan of NPR for many years, and have stolen untold excellent ideas from its programming.

It was all so far away - there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased.

I am not - thank heavens - one of those 'driven' writers who spend a fortnight buckled with empty fright over an untouched page only to wake at two in the morning feverish with paragraphs.

There's a Norwegian equivalent to 'BBC Introducing' called 'P3 Untouched,' and I remember when they played the first song I ever wrote that I'd put online. I was 16 at that point. That was the first moment where I was like, 'Oh, maybe this is something I want to do more of.'

There is a very uneasy relationship between money and creativity, between money and almost everything. Its tendency to control and corrupt - whether it's in arts or education or politics, hardly anything is untouched by it. Journalism certainly is up there. Everything is susceptible to it.

A lot of subjects are untouched by the Indian Television.

Of all lies, art is the least untrue.

Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue.

Certainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can escape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for his art.

I'm kind of floating out there as an artist. I'm in a safe place where I can play a girlfriend or a best friend or a mommy or a lawyer, but a huge part of me is unused. I'm classically trained, historically inclined and somewhat revolutionary by nature, so I'm frustrated as an artist.

Every now and then there might be a beat someone turned down that I have as an unused beat. But everything that predominantly matches the artist in my 30 years of doing this, it was me walking in and sitting there with no drums, no samples, no nothing, and making a beat on the spot.

To be a film-maker, you have to lead. You have to be psychotic in your desire to do something. People always like the easy route. You have to push very hard to get something unusual, something different.

When anyone starts out to do something creative - especially if it seems a little unusual - they seek approval, often from those least inclined to give it. But a creative life cannot be sustained by approval, any more than it can be destroyed by criticism - you learn this as you go on.

Singing in character you can be more of a show off or more modest because it isn't yourself it's a nice way to sing, unusual, a bit like being in musical I guess.

Changes are not unusual - I mean, most movies, when they release them, they make changes. But somehow, when I make the slightest change, everybody thinks it's the end of the world.

Being shoved into the top-40 scene was an unusual experience. It was great I'd become accessible to a huge audience but not terribly fulfilling.

It's not unusual to have only three weeks to score a picture. And that's three weeks from signing on to finishing the last recording session. That's how I did 'The Queen' and, more recently, it's how I did 'The Imitation Game.'

If you can do something exciting and unusual, you might as well give it a go.

It was very unusual to employ prettiness as part of a building.

My expectations for myself were never high. I had a very unusual way of writing songs and of thinking about music. I wasn't at all like Bob Dylan or Simon and Garfunkel. I was completely different - I didn't have a David Geffen at my side.