Neil Gaiman Quotes

In order to understand what they need to understand, in order to write what they write, they have to be free. And yet, they aren't ever free. They are not free because they are not free of the constrictions their art puts on them.

I think anything I do will have an island feel, but I don't want it to be just that; I don't want to be put in a box.

There are just certain realities about our world and I just happen to be creative within it.

It betrays hubris on the part of the artist to think his medium is limiting him, and I think we all recognize this.

It's not that I don't want to do different films. The non-mainstream stuff that I did started to get successful... But for an industry which runs essentially on money, they do put you in a box.

I went mainstream in a major way with the song "Let's Dance." And what I found I had done was put a box around myself. It was very hard for people to see me as anything other than the person in the suit who did "Let's Dance," and it was driving me mad - because it took all my passion for experimenting away.

I want to be able to create characters for as long as I can and I want to tell stories for as long as I can but unfortunately I'm not given those opportunities because I'm often boxed into the former category...

It's very easy I think when you're a creative person to wait for the right thing and to start getting self-conscious about how you are going to express what you do and what's special about you. I would say in general, a lot of times the answer is that you just dive into something and you find your own voice through that process.

All the traumas I went through separating art from writing don't exist anymore. That's why I love being in rock 'n' roll. It's a whole life thing.

I believe that children long for form just as grownups do, and that it releases rather than cramps creative energy.

An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.

The reason I got into this business was for the privilege to exist in different genres and different worlds and play out different realities.

The creative process must be explored... as the expression of the normal people in the act of actualizing themselves.

An artist should be taking risks. That's the whole idea of being an artist.

In Bergman's world I represented a sort of intellectual, skeptical, ironic person, rather cold and frustrated. When I went abroad and made films in Italy and other places, I was used in different ways. I was rather often cast as crazy people, maniacs. It was very good for me and it was fun because it is nice to play crazy people if you are not in reality. And I think perhaps that changed how Ingmar saw me. Suddenly I was on the more magical side of his world, playing the people with fantasies, variety, the artists.

There are so many things in the world - in the cities - so much to see. Does art need to represent this variety and contribute to its proliferation? Can art be that free? The difficulties begin when you understand what it is that the soul will not permit the hand to make.

I just think that's the job of an actor. I guess that's the variation that you're talking about. It's probably a byproduct of just constantly looking for something different, because that's what I feel like I'm supposed to do.

In every human being there is the artist, and whatever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to express the result of his growth and his contact with life. I don't believe any real artist cares whether what he does is 'art' or not. Who, after all, knows what art is?

For me, making a movie is kind of like vomiting. Not that film is like vomit, but more like this mass of ideas and thoughts that you have and just have to put them out there. It's not even about making perfect sense - it's more about making perfect nonsense. I don't do too much soul-searching or self-analysis. I just enjoy making things.

I couldn't portray a woman in all her natural loveliness... I haven't the skill. No one has. I must, therefore, create a new sort of beauty.

I think it's possible to allow an artist to go beyond his borders and play.

One of my biggest heroes in music has been David Bowie. He's said, 'I'm going to be a painter now, or I'm going to do some films,' and his audience is very forgiving, because they understand him as an artist. Whether you agree or like the result, you respect that he's expressing his artistic feelings.

I don't really enjoy working in TV, to be completely honest, even though it's incredibly lucrative, I'm just terrified of not being satiated in a myriad of different ways. It's amazing that I get to create every day, as an actor, or a director, or a writer, and I get to do it in a variety of different genres and worlds and characterizations. I think that's the great privilege of what we do, we get to make believe. I get to go to so many different places, try on different occupations, take on different points of view. That's what's always been sort of alluring.

Inability, human incapacity, is the only boundary to an art.

I try never to say no when it comes to creativity, but I do try and lead down an "appropriate road" - like not on furniture or the walls.