Thomas Newman Quotes

The entire making of 'Within and Without' was a series of experiments and trial by error. When I started writing, I didn't have a strong idea of what the record was going to end up like.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

Any talk of 'craft' makes me laugh. My music looks outward; it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for cheesemakers. I don't know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar, it's like the first time. There's no craft in that.

If you're always playing the correct notes, there's something wrong - you're not searching; you're not reaching for anything.

You just keep playing. If someone special comes along and organizes it in a new way, then you'll have another approach and everybody will jump on it to try to learn.

I think it's always important to constantly keep the band on their toes and try new things that you hope will work. That's how 'Apologize' was born, and maybe down the line another little song will be born by that mentality. I've always really liked that song.

I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.

I like people that can strap on a guitar and don't sweat the fact that you have to come up with a song in an hour. I want to work with someone who won't feel like they have to play along with Jason Molina. I want them to just have the confidence.

Musicians are always eclectic. Musicians are always curious and hungry for new things.

What I always try to do is to respond to the song; I've always rebelled against theory.

Miles Davis fully embraced possibilities and delved into it. He was criticized heavily from the jazz side. He was supposed to be part of a tradition, but he didn't consider himself part of a tradition.

To keep creating something with this type of music, you have to take it out of the box.

I got to realizing that I wanted to record, I wanted to experiment. And doing those same old songs the same old way - I said, 'I think it's time for me to have some fun.'

One thing I liked about 'Silver Bell' is that I barely knew how to play in the tuning I was writing in, and I just went for it anyway.

The rule is to try and never play the same thing twice when you have the freedom to do that in the song.

The beautiful thing about working with new instruments is that you sort of approach it with a fresh perspective.

None of us understand what we're doing, but we do beautiful things anyway.

I think half the point of painting a picture is that you don't know what will happen... that if painters did know what was going to happen they wouldn't bother to do it.

When you're doing a movie, you're in a vacuum, just going, "Well, that's done. Let's see what happens."

Art is the act of navigating without a map.

I've always been somebody who, when I started a picture, never knew what the next picture would be.

Some song ideas absolutely require a kind of rigid discipline, and others require absolute chaotic abandon. The form is only valid if you know how to un-form it. I don't mean to sound like an intellectual here!

The best thing that I got was rehearsing with my father. It was always about the process of figuring things out, and trying something new, and having another take on something and keeping it alive.

For me, something will come in my head and I'll either end up calling my cell phone to record it, or I'll just pick my guitar up and see what comes out. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't. So there's really no set method behind it.

After a couple of failed attempts, I came up with a weird tuning where I was dropping the G string down a step so that it became a seventh, and it got me to a place where I could play all these figures fairly easily. It was not an easy thing to work out.