creative introspection Quotes

I rhyme… to see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

It's funny, I can see the science in how music is made with other artists, but it's hard for me to dissect my own thing.

When I'm writing a book, I prefer not to speak about it, because only when the book is finished can I try to understand what I've really done and to compare my intentions with the result.

It makes you feel good when a movie works. Usually when I see an old movie I've made, I say to myself, 'Oh God, why did I do this?' and 'Why didn't I change that?' and things like that.

I do write, but for now I am keeping it all in the desk drawer. I have always written. The only book that I have published was "Revolution," during the election campaign, a book that contains both personal and political chapters. I have never been happy with what I have written, including three novels that, from my point of view, are incomplete.

I paint as a way of looking for myself in the world.

I wrote lyrics that were intensely personal to me a few years ago. Maybe people know me better now.

What my art probably lacks is a kind of passionate humanity... There is no sensuous relationship, not even the noblest, between myself and the many.

It's a shock for me to go through and see all those years of painting my life, which is very personal for me. It's a very difficult thing for an artist to look back at his work.

Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul, and shows to people these secrets which are common to all.

I think, as a writer, I'm in my own head.

The most available example of how poetry works for a poet is yourself, and yet you'll probably be the last one to know exactly how you're serving the art and how the art is serving you.

You know I was curious - I was interested in all kinds of mystery or deeper meanings in the paintings because I myself have not analyzed why they have turned out like this or like that.

I wrote an episode for 'thirtysomething,' and a producer said, 'That's really good, but what is it about? What does it say about you? What questions are you asking yourself?' I had never thought about that. This comment changed who I was, because it made me look at my own soul, the dark corners in my soul, and accept that dark side.

A lot of directors don't bother to go back and look at their films, but I do.

I think what I love about the documentary process is that you bring yourself to the documentary. And hopefully that makes you ask good questions, and hopefully that makes you reveal a little bit about yourself as well.

I am a keen observer of my own films; I also try to discover myself through the movies I make.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there's always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

As a writer reading, I came to realize the obvious: the subject of the dream is the dreamer.

The sociability of artists is a paradoxical and precarious thing, and ceases the instant they begin their actual artistic work.

As I paint, I realise, while it's something I do very much by myself, it's very solitary, the creative process feels similar to making music to me now, at least as far as my brain is concerned.

Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me.

Sometimes artist like to catch themselves looking out, let the world see them for once. It's a signature. This one is a very bold one. But this is also a witnessing. We want to remember, and we want to be remembered. That's why we paint.

In many of my plays, there was a kind of autobiographical character in the form of a son or young man. The purpose of it, of course, was to write about myself. That character was always the least fully realized. Eighteen years later, you realize, That's what he was about.

I don't know any filmmaker who can deconstruct their own work.