Shakti Gawain Quotes

Anything that propels me to create, like [my book, Straight Walk]. It kept me inspired for almost four years.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

There is no scientific discoverer, no poet, no painter, no musician, who will not tell you that he found ready made his discovery or poem or picture - that it came to him from outside, and that he did not consciously create it from within.

My best songs come from a place outside myself.

I learned that creativity is all about being frustrated.

My work always comes from the same source - from movement. It doesn't necessarily come from an outside idea, though the source can be something small or large that I've seen, often birds or other animals. The seeing can then provoke the imagining.

Maybe some people, when they sit down to write their great novel or make their great record or paint their great painting, they have it all planned out in their head. But for me, it's never worked that way.

I became inspired while I was listening to music on the radio. I felt the music in my head sounded better, so I turned off the radio and scribbled it down on a piece of paper. I remember that it was in May. People liked that song. They said it was beautiful. I felt overjoyed.

Sometimes in the middle of the night, I wake up with a song in my head, and I have to finish it so I can fall back asleep.

I really believe that cultivating creativity, as a general principle, is about managing your energy.

I don't know what aids creativity. All I know is that it feels natural to hold a guitar in my hands and sing.

I've written songs everywhere, and I think the place does matter.

I think when you're being creative, you still attach it to reality somehow.

It's weird: I don't really know where I pull my inspiration from. I think it's N.E.R.D.

Even if you're not releasing songs, the act of creativity is important. That's the part I love, when you're in the moment. The rest of it I'm not particularly interested in at all.

So, I can't tell you the mentality behind the stuff, because that's thousands of hours manifested into one moment, maybe in the shower or driving down the road that the idea comes and the genius strikes and sometimes, it happens moments before you go to the ring.

I always imagine, and try to be on the lookout, for new things, for references that can inspire me creatively so I can showcase things that people haven't done before or that are new.

When I take from my influences, it's rare that I do it literally.

There was never an 'a-ha' moment when a spider bit me and I knew I could write songs. For that reason, I don't know if I'm always going to be able to. I want to write songs forever, but it's an elusive thing.

Life and art are inseparable.

I don't particularly look at other artists when I'm working. But references do come into my work intuitively.

I have such deep appreciation for artists who have the ability to create something from within, something completely unique and original to each piece of work.

I don't really have a schedule; I just get up in the morning. I work at home. I don't feel that my work is a separate thing from living - I get ideas about what I want to write about from the real things that I'm worrying about as I live.

For me, as I was growing up, I studied architecture, I was into music, and I always felt that there was a gap between the things that I loved and consumed and who made them and how they made them.

A lot of my songs are inspired by a muse of some sort, whether she's real or not.