Joel Hodgson Quotes

I've always felt that there's a point where a piece seems to be alive, that is, living. And that's the point where I know the composition is finished.

Even when you're producing difficult material and you get emotional, after it you feel good; you feel like you've done a good job, or had an emotional release. I've always enjoyed that, but you go home and think, that was a good day's work, and you move on.

To finish a song is the best feeling in the world.

We all take from our artistic endeavors what we as individuals need, to make the process unique and fulfilling to ourselves.

Some people get turned on by my work, and it sells, but what drives me is the process of making it.

Perhaps I might be satisfied, momentarily, with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind.

I'll go on making films until I make one that pleases me from the first to the last frame. Then I'll quit.

I wouldn't do a project if it weren't a story I wanted to tell. That's rewarding in itself, as a writer, if you're working on a story that you enjoy telling.

I've produced a couple of films and really enjoyed starting it from the very beginning and seeing it all the way through to the end; that was very gratifying.

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.

So, once I've written a song, you know, I'm pretty happy with what the song is on its own terms.

After I had done a handful of cartoons I was satisfied with, I started submitting them to the magazines.

The best feeling I ever get is when I finish a song, and it exists, and it didn't exist before, and now it's there, and it makes me feel a certain way.

And I don't have any specific steps to take because I don't start the same way every time. But there is a knowing when it's enough and you can leave it alone.

Books and movies are never finished, only surrendered.

I would like to say when I turn the project over to the label that I have been successful. And that's truly the way I feel. But, in addition to the self-pride in 'making' a good album, to be honest, I'd love to have a hit record.

The different bodies of my work end themselves when there's no more discovery to be had.

Making a series can sometimes feel like you're keeping a secret for months until it comes out; so when it finalizes in front of you, if you like the final product, it can be very exciting.

I can't usually stomach a project after I finish it, but for those days and weeks and months that it's new to me, I do listen to it, and it might change over time, but it's about function.

There's nothing more satisfying than having an idea and seeing it through to find out that, not only did you like it, but the audience and critics all seemed to agree.

It's hard for me to judge my own films as an artist sometimes. But as an artist, I did feel a fulfillment working on them, you know?

As a creative, as an artist, I'm just excited when people want my stuff, and want to experience it.

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.

A painter can hang his pictures, but a writer can only hang himself.