Paula Hawkins Quotes

When I show a film at a festival, I am showing myself. Everything is at stake for me.

Even though I was performing all the time as an actress and I was doing all of these plays as a kid, there's a vulnerability about being a musician that you don't get [when] you perform somebody else's work.

Writing is very different to having your photo taken. You are exposing yourself more, not physically but emotionally.

If you were to say to me that I couldn't paint, I would write. If I couldn't write, I would be a set designer. As long as I'm creating something, I'm happy.

People used to say nobody can sing my songs but me - they're too personal.

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.

I've written songs before, and I don't want to share them with anybody. It's really personal for me, that sort of creative outlet where you put your emotions to paper or put to song. I don't do it that much anymore, but to let someone in on that outlet and to have it susceptible to judgment is scary.

I'm doing things that are more artistic again, more close to the material that I love. I don't disparage those things that I did. They're just not as much reflective of who I am.

I was putting forward too much of myself when I was singing.

Sometimes, particularly in summers in New York, I have tried to write in shorts or with no shirt on and found myself unable to do so, the reason being, I take it, that writing, even of the most impersonal sort, is for me a divestment, a striptease, even, so that if I start off undressed, I have nowhere to go.

Whatever one considers art to be, there is in many people a hunger to express themselves creatively and to feel authentic in doing that.

Modeling is exciting, but I certainly felt frustrated that I couldn't speak out or express myself. I always wanted to express my desires in some other medium.

You want your fans to like what you do, because it's coming from your heart and soul. You write it, you produce this thing. It's like your baby.

I'm not an exhibitionist. But, honestly, for my art I'll do anything almost. I'll go there.

I've always seen it as the role of an artist to drag his inside out, give the audience all you've got. Writers, actors, singers, all good artists do the same. It isn't supposed to be easy.

I've always really liked the idea of an artist name, like a cover-up, even though in my music I'm being very personal in the stuff that I write about.

My general advice for writers/comedians is, make stuff you like and are proud of. Put it in a place where people can see it, whether that's onstage or on the Internet or wherever. Just do the things that make you happy creatively, and then show them to people.

I always like to vent and tell the truth in my music.

I'm reclusive when it comes to me giving art away because I get real sensitive about that and critiques.

I have to be vulnerable to allow myself to give the best performance I, and that doesn't stop in between takes, and it doesn't stop when I am finished for the night.

It's really intense to write and make a movie and produce it and have it come out in the world. It's a very vulnerable thing.

Bryan Cranston's advice to actors, it's my favorite thing, and it changed my life. He said: Don't go into an audition to get the job, go to share your work. That was so liberating. You read it, interpret it, embody it the way you want to play that person and embody them with your whole heart and soul for those 20 minutes.

I feel like I try to write from an honest of a place as I can - without scaring people off too much, I guess.

I've always been the person who has needed a creative outlet.

In a portrait, you always leave part of yourself behind.