I will never stop making music.
My art form is my child, and that's what I give my focus to.
When I write a film, there's a particular thing I am wrestling with and the question or concern I'm dealing with has to be big enough for me to dedicate a year or two of my life. If the question isn't big enough, or rich enough, I'll lose interest.
I love every aspect of the creation of motion pictures and I guess I am committed to it for life.
The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration.
I was always trying - I never wanted to let my fans down; I always wanted them to see me in my art form.
This is all so exciting I've decided to keep making one movie every 36 years.
I think the most significant change in my life is the decision to do a series. An hourlong dramatic television series on a broadcast network swallows you and chews you up and refuses to spit you out. You're making a decision that's going to be a profound and significant impact on the practical aspects of your life.
I just want to give the people 100% of myself as an artist.
The responsibility of the artist consists in perfecting his work so that it may become attractively disinteresting.
To me, film is a religion. I don't expect to get paid to make it, but I do expect total dedication.
Music is so 100 percent for me that the idea of giving that up in any way, shape, or form would be terrifying to me.
When you're making a movie, you can't think anybody will ever see it. You've just got to make a movie for the values it has. The greatest films were made because someone really wanted to make them. And, hopefully, the audience will show up, too.
Over the years, I've found one rule. It is the only one I give on those occasions when I talk about writing. A simple rule. If you tell yourself you are going to be at your desk tomorrow, you are by that declaration asking your unconscious to prepare the material. You are, in effect, contracting to pick up such valuables at a given time. Count on me, you are saying to a few forces below: I will be there to write.
A film, I feel, is a state of mind. A film eventually comes from an idea: based on an idea, you make a decision, and once you make the decision, you keep comparing everything to that, but don't question the decision itself.
There is a great deal that either has to be given up or be taken away from you if you are going to succeed in writing a body of work.
A writer never finds the time to write. A writer makes it. If you don't have the drive, the discipline, and the desire, then you can have all the talent in the world, and you aren't going to finish a book.
I'll tell you one thing: I will always play the sh** out of my guitar.
You just have to work really hard and throw everything into it. ... It's really hard to be an artist, and even if you do work really hard, there's no guarantee about anything. There's no advice you can give someone that things will somehow work out, but you can talk to people about how they can make art a big part of their life.
When it comes to your creative life and what it's going to take, you will do a disservice to everybody if you just dabble.
You want to paint? First of all you must cut off your tongue because your decision takes away from you the right to express yourself with anything but your brush.
My dedication to my music has driven everyone away. I've had girlfriends, but I always end up on my own. I don't particularly like it, but I don't see a way 'round it.
When you sign up to a film, you sign up to everything that's in the script. I really believe in that.
I decided that the whole idea of what it means to be an artist was that somehow you are ontologically oriented toward poverty : "As an artist, you don't make money." I had to figure out some kind of way to guarantee that I'd be able to continue doing the work that I wanted to do, whether I made money from the work I was doing or not.
I hate to sound like a romantic adolescent, but I believe artists don't generally see art as a career choice; they simply can't overcome their desire to make art, and will live on little income for as long as they have to, before they start to sell their work - or give up and get a paying job.
