Michael Cudlitz Quotes

I've had my taste of intense fame, and I've got it out of my system. Now I'm free to choose parts which fulfil me in different ways.

When I speak to students and they ask how much money you can make in art, as if that is a reason to persue it, I tell them to do something else.

It took me a long time to get to a position where I can feel that, with my art, I'm capable of saying what I need to say, and once I finish it, I can sit back and say, "It's done, and I'm okay with that. People can judge it good or bad, and it doesn't matter. I'm okay with it because I said something I needed to say." That's a really hard place to get, as an artist.

The satisfaction of producing a work of art is the thing of getting off on it on some level.

In art, something comes of nothing. Out of the thin air and the ether, you create a story. And that is intensely satisfying.

I have never expected anything from my work but the satisfaction I could get from it by the very fact of painting and saying what I couldn't say otherwise.

I have touched with a sense of art some people-they felt the love and the life. Can you offer me anything to compare to that joy for an artist?

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication.

I've had different opportunities in my life, but I've tried to maintain the spirit of an amateur. Our culture roots everything in the barometer of success and how much money you make. But if you really just aspire to a life in the arts, it's really not a barometer at all.

It is not the act of making art that is painful. It is the desire to make something and not acting on it that causes pain....A day when I don't write is less happy. This is not discipline. It is affection, enthusiasm, adventure-any number of other words besides discipline.

Write for the love of your art. Someplace down the road, the money, the fame, they'll come, but by that time you won't be thinking in terms of money or fame.

Going to set, every day, and working with the incredible actors I get to work with is fulfilling. I've been doing this since I was nine years old, so it's always been something that I've been passionate about. It's always fed me.

A really large percentage of kids from Duke go to work on Wall Street, and they make a lot of money, but they're almost slaves to their jobs, working crazy hours. Their job totally dominates their lives, and most of them aren't happy. So many of my friends are going down that path. I even thought about it for a second, like "Should I be doing that?" But I just pursued my dreams instead, and I always tell people to do that. Now I make more money than they do, and I'm doing what I love.

The TV show I do ['Dr Quinn'] is the day job that enables me to work with this theater [Pacific Resident Theatre Ensemble]. That's all I live for. That's what I care about. There's no dough in it. Nothing to do but lose money. But it's all from the heart, and that's why it's so much fun.

Completing a piece of art and using all of the elements of making a film, was satisfying, for sure.

I eat for a living, so working out is definitely part of my job, the same way that the eating, tasting, and drinking is.

I remind myself Vincent van Gogh died without having sold a single painting. Like, art is not measured by the trappings that people attached to it. It's the thing itself, and so, as you know, it's been a dream of mine to write songs for Disney, and so, it's really exciting to finally hear. It's two and a half years.

I don't buy art in order to leave a mark or to be remembered; clutching at immortality is of zero interest to anyone sane.

I've been lucky to have things come to me that creatively fulfill me, and those are usually the independent films just because you have a little bit more freedom.

I'd been an actor my whole life, since I was a kid. And then, I quit for awhile and went to university. When I wanted to start acting again, I couldn't get a job, and that was really depressing. So, I realized, at that time, that I have to take responsibility for my own creativity.

Luckily, I've never been offered a directing job that was lucrative. I've never heard, "Here's $800,000 to remake Sisters."

Both of my parents were incredibly supportive of me being in any arts, because they were both in the arts. They weren't the typical story of, "Oh, get a real job. You need to make money." They basically said, "Yup, be an artist. You'll be broke your whole life but you'll be happy."

The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.

I find myself absolutely fulfilled when I have written a poem, when I'm writing one. Having written one, then you fall away very rapidly from having been a poet to becoming a sort of poet in rest, which isn't the same thing at all. But I think the actual experience of writing a poem is a magnificent one.

As an actor, you get hired for what you last did. And I guess it just becomes your choice or obligation to do different things.