Steve Martin Quotes

If I feel like I've completely drained every ounce of energy out of me for this song, and I can't go any further with it, then I stop, even if the song is unfinished. Most of the time, when it's finished, it's because I've used every ounce of me to write it.

One of my big fears is drying up, and the more I create, the more I feel myself shrinking beneath the backlog of work I've done.

I watch people who are not driven by creativity any more, and I think how dull it must be to produce the same kind of thing. If you don't feel you're reaching something new, then don't do it.

There are all sorts of reasons why I don't do much work in the theatre, the main one being that after two performances I feel I've given all I can. I hate repetition, I really do. It's like asking a painter to paint he same picture every day of his life.

As an artist, it's possible to get tired of yourself.

I don't live in the past or focus on making new songs sound like my old stuff; it would be stupid, and I don't think anyone would like it.

I quit comics because I got completely sick of it. I was drawing comics all the time and didn't have the time or energy to do anything else. That got to me in the end.

With all due respect to 'The Vampire Diaries,' doing the same thing, over and over again, for essentially five years straight, it really becomes laborious and tedious, and it becomes a job. You obviously find gratification in acting, but you're playing the same character. No matter how compelling it is, it starts feeling pretty monotonous.

I actually think the creative process is finite, and I'm wondering whether I've retched everything up. Because it's like vomiting or shitting.

I speak for an art ... weary of its puny exploits, weary of pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing, of going a little further along a dreary road.

There are many images which I miss on purpose. I've done too many of them before and photographing them again doesn't change the world, or me.

You can only be independently creative for so long until your brain burns out.

As for the reasons behind my retirement, they mostly center around simple fatigue and a fear that if I continue for many more years my work will begin to suffer, or at the very least ease into the graveyard of mediocre cartoons.

Playing the same role over and over makes me feel claustrophobic sometimes and smaller than I am.

The danger in playing a piece over and over again lies in getting stuck in a rut where you don't ask questions anymore and you always play it the same way.

Concert pianists are really afraid to try out the Beethoven Fourth Concerto if the Third happens to be their specialty. That's the piece they had such success with on Long Island, by George, and it will surely bring them success in Connecticut. So first there's tremendous conservatism. And then stagnation sets in. Or it certainly did in me.

I'm all for trying anything once; otherwise, you end up like David Guetta - reproducing the same formula over and over.

You can't just keep bottling the same thing over and over again and think the audience isn't going to catch on.

I am constantly amazed at the musicians that are able to do the same thing over and over for 20 or more years. That would drive me absolutely insane.

You can't get tied into your past. It's not fun for me. You can't just keep doing the same material forever. Some people just play the hits, and it's the same show every night. They're happy to do that. I personally am not.

After 'Place Beyond the Pines,' honestly, I was sick of myself. Sick of my own ideas. I wanted to do an adaptation, but everything I'd been reading, I just didn't understand it.

If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you're sort of writing the same song over and over again.

You know, if the filmmakers were satisfied with the film they just made, they could jump right in and make another one, instead of lingering on the last one.

You can only be creative so long and then you're just down and out and completely destroyed.