Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I want to write songs that are so sad, the kind of sad where you take someone's little finger and break it in three places.
What I want people to recognize is that we have to keep working together and take charge because we all have the same story.
I think I have always had a pretty strong creative impulse. And that has probably saved me from abandoning myself completely.
We as visual artists need to continue to be renegades and say, "Yes I am here to do a project, but what is the social service?"
One of my big fears is drying up, and the more I create, the more I feel myself shrinking beneath the backlog of work I've done.
The artistic process seems to be mythologized quite a lot into something far greater than it actually is. It is just hard labor.
I think there is a certain perversity in my music in that I continue, you know, to eat at the same ball of vomit year after year.
Jesus Christ was the biggest blight on the human race, he was. And all them socialists and communists - second rate Christianity.
I'm an Australian, and when I grew up much of my influences were American - blues music and country music, all that sort of thing.
I look at you and you look at me and deep in our hearts know it That you weren't much of a muse, but then I weren't much of a poet
Most people wait for the muse to turn up. That's terribly unreliable. I have to sit down and pursue the muse by attempting to work.
Most of the time, feelings just seem to get in the way. They're a luxury for the idle, a bourgeois concept. Feelings are overrated.
And she moves among the sparrows. And she floats upon the breeze. She moves among the flowers. She moves something deep inside of me
I'm kind of old-school and love nothing more than sitting, opening a book, and reading it. But I also love listening to audio books.
When I perform onstage, I'm actually kind of nearsighted, so I don't have any real, true understanding of what the audience is like.
I think there's a certain numbness in modern society, that accepts certain kinds of violence, but represses other kinds of violence.
You searched through all my poets, From Sappho through to Auden, I saw the book fall from your hands, As you slowly died of boredom.
My biggest fear is losing memory because memory is what we are. Your very soul and your very reason to be alive is tied up in memory.
And I kissed away a thousand tears My lady of the Various Sorrows Some begged, some borrowed, some stolen Some kept safe for tomorrow.
I love being manipulated by what I see. I love weepies and romantic comedies where you're reaching for the Kleenex at the right moment.
I just found this world a hard place to be good in,’ says Bunny, then he closes his eyes and, with an expiration of breath, goes still.
In the hysterical technocracy of modern music, sorrow is sent to the back of the class where it sits, pissing its pants in mortal terror.
The more information you have, the more human our heroes become and consequently the less mysterious and godlike. They need to be godlike.
I see it as my duty in some way is to be out in the world as an Australian putting forward what I consider to be authentic Australian music.
The problem with books, now that I've written one, is that the idea of adaptation is so much easier than sitting down to write something new.
Writing screenplays makes me a better musician because it clears my head. After writing a movie, I go running back to music as fast as I can.
I write songs from the point of view I had at a time;I'm not tryingto write songs from a young person's point of view.That only ends in disaster.
The only person who can say they're happy getting old is someone who isn't actually old yet. Every day, I get less and less happy about that idea.
To me, I don't write when I'm depressed. If I'm depressed, which is actually rare, I'm not doing anything, you know, and I'm not able to do anything.
What you're really after when you see a film or listen to a song is a singular vision, and I'm not sure how much of that you really get in Hollywood.
Self-editing is the way I write. Ten verses of a song and it's finished. Then we start playing it and if I see that it's too long, I'll start cutting.
Moving to the country is a very bold thing to do. You can have vague romantic notions about doing that, but in actuality, it can be a terrifying thing.
I have to be able to pull you in. How can I diversify my audiences? What role do I have to play to be part of that shift? I have to take that seriously.
We are still struggling with people who don't feel comfortable going into museums. As a visual artist I ask how artists can be part of enacting a change.
I am not interested in anything that doesn't have a genuine heart to it. You've got to have soul in the hole. If that isn't there, I don't see the point.
It's very important that the music has a sense of adventure to it, and that it's done by the seat of your pants. There's a kind of nervy element about it.
The guitar is something you kind of embrace, and the piano is something you kind of - when you play it, you sort of push it away. It feels very different.
That's what I like about watching a movie: you enter an imagined world that's more interesting, more engaging than your own. Or less painful than your own.
That's what we [outsiders] feel America is really about - the kind of crazed ravings of the Christian right - when it's probably something quite different.
If beautiful movies can influence you to go out and hug your children, then we have to be honest and say that other movies can inspire you to do bad things.
I've always worn suits. To me they're a very practical kind of thing to wear. You put one on and don't really have to think about what you're going to wear.
I've watched 'Oprah Winfrey.' And I'm proud. I don't care what anybody says! I don't know whether I've watched it. I've been in the room while it's been on.
I'm very happy to hear that my work inspires writers and painters. It's the most beautiful compliment, the greatest reward. Art should always be an exchange.
Rock music is the province of the young, and it should be made by young people. I'm not running around in a pair of spandex tights trying to reclaim my youth.
I have a very strange relationship in general with women around my music. There's some that understand it and some that think there should be a law against it.
I've always done a lot of research and stuff around the songs that I write so there are pages and pages of writing and you can kind of see these songs emerging.
With writing a song, I've always felt, right from the start, like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel. I don't ever feel there's a font of ideas to fall back on.
The older I get, the more I feel those kinds of ghosts - especially the women in my life - moving out of the shadows a bit more and becoming more present in my life.
At the end, we're kind of observers - creative people, I mean. I feel like an observer, and I'm pretty much able to step out of things and see how things are playing out.
I used to believe that if I could do certain things - write a book or be a successful musician - that I'd be transformed into a happy person, but it doesn't work that way.