John Malkovich Quotes

None of my books has been ever in my head; after they're finished, they go. It's like being a sort of medium; you just grab it when it's there then just release it when it's time to go. There's a lot of instinct, not planning.

I don't consciously go out looking for themes. They attach themselves to me.

I think good artists know when they're on a roll, and they recognize when lightning is striking. It's a very fortunate thing to have that inspiration and not to overanalyze it or mess with it; you just follow it if you love what you do.

I used to look at composing music as problem solving. But as I get older, it's not about problem solving anymore. There are no solutions, because there are no problems. You just turn the tap and it flows out.

I honestly can't characterize my style in words. It seems that whatever comes to me naturally, I play.

Melody is pure intuition. I don't use any thinking brain when I do that. That's totally in the zone.

The best stuff comes out when you're not making it for anything and you don't really know what you're making.

Sometimes you feel like you have to do research to make something, other times you know you don't feel it so much.

When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.

The artwork had very little to do with the thought process, and the writing too, for that matter. What happens, happens, and it happens outside the brain.

I expect photographs to find me. I never thought of looking for them. I instinctively put them there. My intellect had nothing to do with it.

The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself.

We all love to sing, and when we sit down to write a song I think it kind of shows itself to us.

I get lost in my right brain, especially in creative things.

It's funny because I never studied, I never took a class. So everything I do is very innate and organic; I don't really have words for it. It is a communion with spirit. I don't get in my own way and allow the character to do what it's going to do.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

I consider creativity to be a more non-rational, subconscious thing. You have a relationship to your creativity - you can feed it with content, with some rational prodding and sleep and things like that, but the mechanisms by which your creativity work are largely unknown.

I'm coming up with new music, I'm in the best shape of my life, I'm real sharp, my energy is strong. I look at it as: I'm just following the energy. That's how I sum that up.

To me, songs come of their own volition - and with an open-ended philosophy.

Even when I don't think I'm writing, I'm writing. There's some part of my brain geared toward making songs up, and I know it's collecting things and I know when I get a moment to be by myself, that's when they come out.

Whenever I get the sort of fancy pants idea that I'm doing anything other than pure expression things start to go wrong. When I get too premeditated, things start to go wrong. I just shut that part of my brain off.

I've become a workaholic. When the shows slow down and there's no press and I can get my time to myself in the studio with my music, I get into this zone, man. I enter this incredible space where I'm just making music. And I feel like I can work with anybody - with Elton John, with Hanson - and I can make something incredible.

All stories come from the subconscious - which is why it doesn't make sense to over-plan.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

When you're working well, you don't do research. Whatever you need comes to you.