Instant Inspiration Quotes

You can make a hit song in 15 minutes. I don't know about someone else's song, but songs that people like of mine, I've created in 15 minutes or less.

If at noon you sit down and there's just silence or blank tape, in an hour if you have a song, that didn't exist an hour ago. Now it exists and it might exist for a long time. There's something empowering about that.

I just go into the studio, look at the lyrics for the first time when I put them on the piano, and go. If I haven't got it within 40 minutes, I give up. It's never changed, the thrill has never gone, because I don't know what I'm going to get next.

It's hard to know exactly what it sounds like to me. I'm in the studio and I write it. and that's it.

I think that the song, the song "Stand By Me" is one of those songs that... and someone asked me, what was you thinking about or what was you feeling about? It's something that, songwriters just write songs. It's like an artist that paints. They paint what they feel. It's not, it's not about how many of these painting I'll sell it's just how they feel at the moment. And that's how I wrote "Stand By Me".

If I'm going to draw something, I don't know the day before what I'm going to draw. It's just very much an interpretation of how I'm feeling that day and what I think is the coolest thing in my brain at that very moment.

It takes me, like, half an hour to write the lyrics for a song. They just come out.

Cover the canvas at the first go, and then work on till you see nothing more to add ... Don't proceed according to rules and principles, but paint what you observe and feel. Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression.

Genius always gives its best at first; prudence, at last.

This is what I love doing. I am very easy with it. It comes instantly and quickly to me. And I don't need to spend hours designing... I could design on a beach or while travelling.

Every collaboration helps you grow. With Bowie, it's different every time. I know how to create settings, unusual aural environments. That inspires him. He's very quick.

How many leaps did Nijinksy take before he made the one that startled the world? He took thousands and thousands and it is that legend that gives us the courage, the energy, and arrogance to go back into the studio knowing that while there is so little time to be born to the instant, you will work again among the many that you may once more be born as one. That is a dancer's world.

There is something else to be said about this immediate, spontaneous way of working, and that is this: in such moments, one is playing at the game of creation.

The name of a cat has to come from something that just occurs to you by interacting with the cat.

I spent a fair amount of time editing the lyrics and allowing the song to kind of evolve. ... anytime there's anything worthwhile, it certainly 'feels' like it happened on the spur of the moment, but it's a composite of lots of spurs of the moment, hopefully. And over time, you catch up with those, and then you have a full set of lyrics you've thought of and you feel comfortable singing.

But I think that's a particular kind of experience involving a certain immediacy between you and the canvass, you and the particular kind of experience of that particular moment.

I've started getting acclimated to writing on the road and on the spot. I just let whatever I feel at the time come out, instead of really sitting there and taking days to write just one song.

I think with improv - and I say it all the time because it's become such a catch thing that you talk about improv - if the scene is well-written, you don't need to improv. But that being said, if something strikes you in the moment and, most importantly, you know where the scene is supposed to go, it's no different than method acting.

'Can't Get Closer' I originally recorded in about half an hour, just on my bed with a microphone. I actually re-recorded the song with a cleaner vocal take, but I decided to leave the demo version on there, just because I felt that instant where it was created is what captured the most emotion.

I don't really have a main source for my style inspiration. It's really about however I feel about myself at the moment.

There are certain scripts that are just written in a way where, for whatever reason, I read it, and instantly that inspiration hit me and it was just kind of electric, and I didn't have to think about it. It just kind of went from there.

There's no secret, but inspiration has to find you working. And that's one of the key things that I've always remembered. And if I put my mind to it tonight, I think I could take a guitar, and by 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, something will have happened - I'll have had something to hang onto. But I think that's the key.

But I don't know. Pee-wee just kind of popped out one day, pretty much fully fleshed-out and fully formed.

That's the best kind of music: the stuff that happens based off intuition.

I don't really dissect too much when ideas come - they just kind of pop into my head; I just take them and run.