Bill Callahan Quotes

There's nothing romantic about my work... I don't believe in inspiration. I believe that you get to your desk, you stay there, you work, you think of nothing else. You write and you write, and in the end, you write something good.

To create well I have to be in a good mood, happy and cool.

I write every day... I never get ideas unless I'm actually writing. Ideas I get in the shower don't do me any good.

I even get inspired by movies that aren't very good, because there's always something good in movies that are collectively thought of as a failure. There's good in everything, I find.

If you love something - and there are things that I love - you do want more and more and more of it, but that's not the way to produce good work.

That's what I find with any good song, you just have to let it happen. Out of about twenty songs you might write, one of any significance. It might be thirty or forty, but I just keep churning them out and churning them out in hope that one of them will stick.

Producing good stuff can be quite tough, and it involves a lot of frustration, but I always like things to be jolly and happy, and I forget that's actually not the point at the end of the day.

Good shows tend to be more fun to do. If you feel like you are doing something good and making a good show, it is a lot more enjoyable.

I like to draw late at night when the house is quiet.

Making art, good art, is always a struggle. It can make you happy when you pull it off. There's no better feeling. It's beauteous. But it's always about hard work and inspiration and sweat and good ideas.

Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied... That's why they can keep on working. I've been able to work for so long because I think next time, I'll make something good.

Well mostly in song writing my experience is that there isn't so much inspiration as hard work. You sit there for hours, days and weeks with a guitar and piano until something good comes.

Sometimes I write with music on, and if I'm in a good flow, I don't even hear it.

Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits.

A good artist has less time than ideas.

I've always considered myself a workaholic... The way I work, I have to turn myself upside down and hang myself by my ankles and wring myself out like a wet sweater, and I have to do that with other people, too, because I think that's where something good comes out.

Music is a means of spreading the good word and spreading positivity and productivity. Those things speak to me.

All I know is that my best work has come out of being committed and happy.

Happiness is such a good state, it doesn't need to be creative. You're not creative from happiness, you're just happy. You're creative when you're miserable and depressed. You find the key to transform things. Happiness does not need to transform.

I'm most happy when I am writing at night, because I need space and time to write.

I got a lot of problems, but I'm really good at intuiting what I need to do to be happy with whatever I create. I know when to stop myself, I know when to start, I know when to leave something alone. I guess I just kind of indulge that completely, and so I just take my time.

I have to be creative to be happy.

I'm never happier than when I'm being creative, whether that's with Coldplay or other artists. I just love being in the studio.

Well, certainly I don't think that there are very many good writers who don't live without a sense of tension. If they haven't got one immediately available to them, then they usually manage to manufacture it in their private lives.

If I'm on form and I'm not being bothered too much by mental problems or whatever, I can whip out something good. That's why I've done quite a few overdubs for Tina Turner and things like that, because even before she made this comeback I said yes to her, just because I love Tina Turner.