Tommy Lee Jones Quotes

That little window like 2004 through like 2010 was probably the most, like most inspiring time of my creative life, for sure.

If you were to say to me that I couldn't paint, I would write. If I couldn't write, I would be a set designer. As long as I'm creating something, I'm happy.

I love directing; it felt right to me when I did 'Flying Lessons'. It's something I will do again. Really, you can always be working and developing. That's something that's kind of ever constant.

Being a screenwriter is not enough for a full creative life.

I had very strong feelings, so the chance to make a film that deals in an imaginative way with stuff you care tremendously about is a real high. It's a really amazing thing to be able to do.

All the work that I do, whether or not it ends up being commercially successful or not, feels like the most important thing to me while I'm doing it. I try to take something away from every project, and so they all feel like milestones for one reason or another.

I've been a story-teller all my life but I realized it only recently.

Being a creative person, I want to feel the highs and the lows.

It's the most important thing, that you're happy with your music and your style. You can't create success and you can't create a successful band.

To have produced a product where I had total creative control and see it flourish is like watching a baby grow.

Once I found art, it was a wrap.

I always wanted to be an artist. I always knew that I wanted to paint, or dance, or sing, or act, or write.

Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow… The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward

I don't understand how people live without creating.

When I make a movie, I just make the movie. I don't think about the success of it. If it becomes successful, that's an amazing treat. If it doesn't, you had a great time making it and you learned from it, and then you make a new thing.

The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.

I attended the High School of Industrial Arts and studied with many great artists as painting is something that you never stop learning about. Actually, in high school there was a time that I was thinking about just concentrating on painting and I asked my music teacher, Mr. Sondberg, for advice and he encouraged me to stick with the music as well. So all my life I have been singing and painting.

I was always involved in art and when I went under contract at Warner Bros. at 18, it afforded me the possibility of never having to stop painting, never having to stop taking photographs and so on, and to actually live a cultural life.

I switched up so that I could work 12-hour shifts at the firm on the weekends so I could have days free to paint. But it was almost like I had a secret life, because I wasn't showing any of my work. It was just in my house. In '89, I got a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. That's when I started to get into group shows. Suddenly I sort of "came out" as an artist.

Every day, through engagement in the arts, our children learn to open their imagination, to dream just a little bigger and to strive every day to reach those dreams.

No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.

But 'why then publish?' There are no rewards Of fame or profit when the world grows weary. I ask in turn why do you play at cards? Why drink? Why read? To make some hour less dreary. It occupies me to turn back regards On what I've seen or pondered, sad or cheery, And what I write I cast upon the stream To swim or sink. I have had at least my dream.

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do - the actual act of writing - turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.

Between films you try to fill your life with hobbies; acting is really so satisfying when you're doing it, and definitely feeds your imagination and creativity to a great degree, but you can't really take much away from it to show for it. I try to fill my time with other things.

I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.