Quotes About Expression

Writing is a funny thing. It's not like you're working on a schedule. It comes in fits and starts.

An icon painter starts not with Jesus Christ but by finding earth and rubbing. Now what is earth, what are you rubbing in directing?

'Even Flow' is the best to play live because of the long solos. It starts out slow and builds, and, depending on what the audience does, I can reflect that in the solo.

I certainly love a boogie and once the music starts I'm usually one of the first out there on the dance floor.

When the business starts shaping the art, or the delivery of the art, then it's not right.

Everything I make starts very personally.

When anybody starts out with a memoir, you get the impulse to tell your own story with your own voice, and you get all that out in one fell swoop sometimes.

I revise constantly, as I go along and then again after I've finished a first draft. Few of my novels contain a single sentence that closely resembles the sentence I first set down. I just find that I have to keep zapping and zapping the English language until it starts to behave in some way that vaguely matches my intentions.

Every song I write, including 'Too Close,' always starts on the guitar.

I like when the song starts to take over and you feel like you have to dance more than write.

A chair, it's like a sculpture. It starts as a thought and then becomes an idea, something I might think about for years. When the time is right, I express it on paper, usually as a simple line in space. Finally, it takes shape.

The way I do it is there's never recording 'sessions.' One finishes, the next one starts. It's just continuous.

There are two kinds of sculptures. There's the kind that subtracts: Michelangelo starts with a block of marble and chips away. And then there is the kind that adds, building with clay, piling it on. The way I write novels is to keep piling on and piling on and piling on.

The hair and makeup is very important in a fashion picture. When I create a look for a girl, it starts with the makeup. Sometimes it takes an entire day to find the look.

If you have a great-sounding guitar that's a quality instrument and a good amp, and you know how to make the guitar talk, that's the key. It starts with the guitar and knowing what it should sound and feel like.

I read a blog about this young filmmaker in the Philippines who made a short film, and one of the characters in the film reads my novel and then starts discussing the novel with someone. The idea that my book can inspire another artist and be part of that other artist's work... that's the reason I write.

I try not to name too many labels - not because it's not cool, but because it starts getting political.

What does it mean for an actor to make a part his own? It means that he takes on what you had intended and starts to put in his own stuff so that it becomes something that could only happen if he played it.

That's what I miss out of all this synthesized music - it starts to lose dynamics.

In every decade rock and roll starts to get very serious and navel gazing and kind of self serious and every once and a while it kind of needs a kick in the pants.

I get an idea about something. I just start thinking about it, and then I get onstage and I talk about it, and then I think about it some more and talk about it some more, and think about it some more and talk about it some more, until it starts to take a shape.

There's a really nice moment in the life of a piece of writing where the writer starts to get a feeling of it outgrowing him - or he starts to see it having a life of its own that doesn't have anything to do with his ego or his desire to 'be a good writer.'

For me, the creative process for me always starts in a personal place. I step away from my iPod or any records or CDs.

It's sort of one ongoing process where writing ends and directing starts.