Quotes About Creativity

I think there are actors who are like, 'Okay, what am I doing, how am I doing it, what's the appeal? Tell me what to do, what are the exact lines from the script? Okay, I got it.' I am not that way. I would be a terrible bus driver. I'd want to be like, 'Oh, let's take this side road! Let's see what happens when we go down this back alley.'

I think the first time I tried to write a romantic song, it was just horrendously embarrassing. I remember thinking, 'Okay, I'm not going to do that anymore.' I think that sort of embarrassed me for the next 10 years.

There isn't a route to success. Make a film. If people like it, you'll be okay. There is no route that I know of.

I love, love songs, but sometimes it's okay to just be young and talk about something other than getting married or falling in love.

Before you have a hit song, all you're doing is banging on the door and screaming, 'I've got something I want to play...' Now with the hit songs, they're like, 'Okay man, we're listening. Whaddya got for us?'

The old adage is, 'Write what you know.' But if you only do that, your work becomes claustrophobic. I say, 'Write what you want to know.'

In my old age, I'll be in L.A.

I can have a career right into my old age, creating music in some way. It seems like a lovely way to go through life.

What works for one writer may not work for another. There are as many methods as there are writers. Were you to live to a grand old age, you would still never have enough time to try them all.

Are you really into pop? Are you really into old country? Blues? If you're not honest about your influences, then things don't sound as real as they can be. They're not as sharp a cheddar cheese as they can be. And I'm trying to be the sharpest cheddar I can be.

One of the fun things in the old days about writing with Frank Miller was that every issue of 'Daredevil' was a challenge to every issue of 'X-Men.'

It's becoming increasingly harder and harder; there's no such thing as independent film anymore. There aren't any, they don't exist. In the old days you could go and get a certain amount of the budget with foreign sales, now everybody wants a marketable angle.

There's still a place for someone to come up with a strong headline, some copy in a commercial that's well written. I'm not saying it was better in the old days; it's just a totally different way of communicating.

I'm constantly being inspired by the old days and taking things from the past and allowing them to lift me up where I am now.

Since I was old enough to understand what a songwriter/producer is, I've had a curiosity about how Max Martin creates what he creates. I wanted to see that happen. I wanted to be there. I wanted to learn from him.

Right now, writing for me is most rewarding because I'm old enough now to have something to say, which probably wasn't always the case.

I've been in love with music since I was old enough to establish my taste.

You can only make the work that you have to make. And I am old enough now to know that I can't start making shows that are going to win awards. That way madness lies.

To make a successful film from a successful play is probably much more difficult than making one from scratch, just as any carpenter will tell you that it is more difficult to restore an old house than to build a comparable new one.

I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again.

It is a fact that everyone's got a limited run in music - but who's to say how long that run lasts? I used to think that there would be no way I'd still be in music when I was 40. I used to think anyone who was 40 was an old man, and they probably shouldn't be doing it anymore.

What would life be like if everybody insisted you must have actually built such-and-such a thing by yourself? I'd be an old man and have nothing to show for the aging.

I was a studio engineer out in L.A. for about six or seven years, and I played sideman for different people, and played in bar bands. I was an old man of 32 when I made my first album.

When I'm writing fiction, I read nonfiction or biographies. Now I'm watching very old movies or old foreign films. I don't immerse myself in whatever's going on in whatever area I'm working in.