Creative Resurgence Quotes

The truth is I made a few good movies in the '50s, then went into freefall.

I hope I'm beginning a new cycle of energy and creativity. If so, it'll really be my third career. The first was as a straight comic in the Sixties. The second was as a counterculture performer in the Seventies. The third will be...well, that's for others to judge.

Around 1980, I went back to painting with a vengeance.

I don't believe in myths of decline or myths of progress, even as regards the literary scene.

It's been over 15 years since I toured... over 12 years since I did any recording under my own name. I never really intended to take that long of a hiatus.

Music was something I had put aside to make movies. Somehow I earlier felt there was only so much creative energy allotted to your life and only that much time to pursue your creativity. But I was wrong.

I was feeling miserable physically, in a lot of pain to the point where it was almost crippling me, especially creatively. I decided to take that and use it as an inspiration for getting out of bed and making something again.

Art is going to make a bigger comeback than ever. That's the upside to things getting challenging.

There is a gap in my work from '84 to 2002, 18 years where I stopped writing. I was working at fiction and other things and starting a school and getting married and starting a family, but I wasn't writing poetry for the better part of 15 years.

Everyone keeps saying the western's dead, but it's not.

An artist's creative energy is ephemeral as a flower. It blooms and soon dies. No artist is great forever. Personally, I think I reached my peak in 2004 when I shot 'Samaria' and '3-Iron'.

Gradually compositions make an appearance again. Political - satirical - conceits expressed in one figure or a few.

I've watched too many artists in my life forget how good the things they used to do were.

When shall we see poets born? After a time of disasters and great misfortunes, when harrowed nations begin to breathe again. And then, shaken by the terror of such spectacles, imaginations will paint things entirely strange to those who have not witnessed them.

The novel is always pop art, and the novel is always dying. That's the only way it stays alive. It does really die. I've been thinking about that a lot.

I'm one of those foolish people who believe the glory days of the record industry aren't behind us. They're actually ahead of us.

Actually, after the release of the Bond film, the producers came back to me to offer me another one, but I didn't have any juice left for an immediate encore.

I've gone through the village of my songwriting and my artistry, and I've gone through lots of different phases, including one where it has been very quiet and abandoned me for a few years.

I got the acting bug back because I felt like all of a sudden maybe after all these years, maybe I might have something to offer again. I walked away from it after 'Signs' because I just felt I was a bit stale and it wasn't ringing my bells, so I focused on directing, writing and producing.

Even at your best, the creative moments are still kind of fleeting.

Who would have thought that the telephone would bring back drawing?

It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing.

The only thing I know for sure about the creative process is it always comes back. Magically. When there are no creative juices and nothing is coming to me - if I wait - it comes!

I go in and out of season. I won't write for months, and then all of a sudden, I'll write like I've got a fever.

That's the way I've always been, between the albums: For two- or three-year gaps I wouldn't pick up a guitar. And when I don't pick up a guitar for a year or two, that's when the songs fall out.