Quotes About Creativity

I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table.

I'm terribly afraid of failure. When your identity is wrapped up in writing and you've written something that doesn't work, it's a tough pill to swallow.

I think with anything where you delve into the back story of an artist, it kind of explains their work more intimately.

The artist never really has any control over the impact of his work. If he starts thinking about the impact of his work, then he becomes a lesser artist.

I think I really produce my best work in Iran.

I don't need to push myself. I don't need to sharpen my own knife and slit my throat. I'm trying to chill it and find an equilibrium and a balance to my work.

The actors that I love to work with, they're hard on me. They're pushing me.

I just want to be in good things that I want to see, and I want to work with talented people who are smarter than myself.

I always loved Alan Menken songs and wanted my first album to be a tribute to him and his work. I always loved his music.

... every writer I had ever known wrote his best work when he had his back up against the wall and thought he would never write another word.

My work is always more emotional than I am. My characters say things to each other that I get accused of not being able to say to my girlfriend.

I find that more and more I'm trying to entertain myself when I'm working, because I know the work's going to go to a horrible place.

I think, for me, when I direct my own work it's just an extension of the authorship.

Once when I went over my work with my Washington University professor, the late great Stanley Elkin, he pointed to a passage of mine and said: Stop vamping. It has remained a caution.

When I finally got up to Industrial Light And Magic to work on the 'Star Wars' movies as a model-maker, it felt like dying and going to heaven.

I'm a big fan of Tom Stoppard's work, and have been since I was in school where I studied him.

I think there's a lot of evolution that's happened in intangible ways, in terms of how I think about the work or how I plan it out.

Anything you ever make that matters takes a long time. Some artists never see their work in front of an audience, so for them 15 years is a blink of an eye. I am nothing but grateful.

I think poets should work in the non-literary, non-academic world, get to know more than a workshop or a university.

It's a way of living, sharing things with people who work with me, and they seem to enjoy it.

Sometimes I want to work with a DP, sometimes I want to work myself. I go to 35mm, 16mm, it's all the same, but it depends on what you want to tell and what are the tools you need.

I don't think [price] reflects if the work is good or bad.A good artist shouldn't be nervous about that.

Beijing is constructing a 100,000 m2 modern art museum, yet it will not feature any of my work.

At a major label you can start to feel that you're working for them, and that any work you do, you're never going to see any benefit.