Drea De Matteo Quotes

Well people love to go dirty and stuff like that. It's funny, because even really dirty things can kind of inspire, but all things inspire really dirty improv and monologues. So then really dirty things can inspire the exact opposite. It's kind of a crapshoot.

I don't think art is propaganda; it should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it.

I go through major crises every few months, but then I have great peaks of belief and creativity. I'm a weird kind of animal.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

I can't help seeing 'Waste Land' as the third in a triptych with my earlier films 'Devil's Playground' and 'Blindsight,' and not least in the awe and gratitude I feel for the group of people who were courageous enough to share their stories with us - and to live lives so rich in inspiration for us all.

I do have that mindset - that most good art comes from some turmoil, from someone trying to come to some equilibrium, or come up and get a breath.

My art is not limited to the songs I create but also to the reaction it creates. I like to sit back and look at the whole thing as if it's a tornado that I'm controlling. It's creating chaos. When you create chaos, ideas are turned upside down, and everybody looks at things in a different way.

Some artists shrink from self-awareness, fearing that it will destroy their unique gifts and even their desire to create. The truth of the matter is quite opposite.

Art is born of humiliation.

To be a Jew is an act of the strenuous mind as it stands before the fakeries and lying seductions of the world, saying no and no again as they parade by in all their allure. And to be a writer is to plunge into the parade and become one of the delirious marchers.

You need to suffer to be interesting.

I wouldn't know how to handle serenity if somebody handed it to me on a plate.

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.

My music touches on things I am concerned with in my own life - the idea of a woman's role in society, sexuality, desire, monogamy, fantasy and glamour. That's what keeps me alive, and if I couldn't keep creating that, I'd fall into a bit of heap.

I'll do anything that sparks me. Sometimes I'll want to do something random with ballet, and then I'll want to be a hippie caterpillar in an animation film. Who knows what will come my way, but I'm going to try and put little hints into the universe, and hopefully they'll float on by.

I want to do performance that inspires people to be true to themselves and has tangible impact on the community. Not just because I want to be a role model - I just think it's the best way to honor the tradition of drag.

'Meenaxi' was a lesson in liberation. It taught me to be a free spirit and understand the pleasure of my work by being different people, just like Meenaxi is.

The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.

My creative life is a constant struggle to achieve a balance between letting things flow in and letting things flow out.

...assume that art begins in unhappiness. True, the goal of art is to convey a vision of coherence and peace, but the effort to develop that vision starts in the more common experience of confusion and pain.

I wrote my songs despite the fact that I was a drunk, not because of it.

This must be what an addict feels like, I think, trying to fight the pull of one last, quick read. My fingers itch toward the binding, and finally, with a sigh of regret, I just grab the book and open it, hungrily reading the story.

People can be chaos but it's hard to fit it into some creative piece that you made. It's hard.

Art and work and art and life are very connected and my whole life has been absurd. There isn't a thing in my life that has happened that hasn't been extreme - personal health, family, economic situations...absurdity is the key word.

Unless he had whiskey running through his veins, Willard came to the clearing every morning and evening to talk to God. Arvin didn't know which was worse, the drinking or the praying. As far back as he could remember, it seemed that his father had fought the Devil all the time.