Andy Partridge Quotes

When inspiration does not come, I go for a walk, go to the movie, talk to a friend, let go... The muse is bound to return again, especially if I turn my back!

If I feel like I've completely drained every ounce of energy out of me for this song, and I can't go any further with it, then I stop, even if the song is unfinished. Most of the time, when it's finished, it's because I've used every ounce of me to write it.

I don't fight creativity. I don't fight against not being creative. If I'm not being creative, I'm not forcing it.

I think sometimes with new characters, you can kind of hit a creative valley, and it's important to recognize when you're in that valley so you can get back out and get back to that peak.

I can't cut off an ear everyday. Do the Van Gogh here and the Mozart there. Anyway it's exhausting enough always having to check up on what one is really doing!.

Most artists have experienced the creative block. We get stuck in our work. We beat our head against the wall: nothing. Sometimes, it is because we are trying something at the wrong time.

As a creative person, you want to be creative, you know? You don't want to constantly wait around - a lot of movies fall apart, or there's just not as much out there as there used to be.

Whenever I finish a movie, I usually go through a period where I think I'll never have another idea. And then, somehow, you get another idea.

The mythology is that from chaos comes great work. I actually used to think that when I was younger, and I no longer think that anymore.

If I get writer's block - this is going to sound funny - I take a shower. Something about the water feels like I'm cleaning my brain as well as my body.

Actually, after 'All Love Lost' I was so drained creatively that I didn't have any clue where I wanted to go. So I just started from scratch.

That's always the time to quit - when you have nothing to say as an artist and creative person.

I know that when I think of myself as being utterly worn out, when I think that somehow I have nothing more to write, then something is happening within me. And, in due course, it bubbles up; it comes to the surface, and then I do my best to listen. But there's nothing mystical about all this. I suppose all writers do the same.

Think of a fine painter attempting to capture an inner vision, beginning with one corner of the canvas, painting what she thinks should be there, not quite pulling it off, covering it over with white paint, and trying again, each time finding out what her painting isn't, until she finally finds out what it is. And when you finally do find out what one corner of your vision is; you're off and running.

Art is not the kind of thing where you get what you put into it all the time. So I learned to not expect anything other than the sort of joy of having a poem in front of me.

I don't know where the ideas come from, and it's terrifying. They seem to be absolute flukes. When I was in my 20s, I'd walk around with a notebook all the time and make sure I wrote down anything that occurred to me. Now I'm just hoping that some sort of event will descend on me.

It may be that learning to do creative work of any kind - not just direct imagery exercises - may help combat writer's block.

The creative process requires a period of boredom, of being stuck. That's actually a very uncomfortable period that a lot of people mistake for writer's block, but it's actually just part one of a long process.

It became apparent to me near the end of the album cycle for 'House Of Gold & Bones' that it had basically run its course. But the band kept pushing for more dates, and I was just, like, 'It's time to stop!'

'Writer's block' sounds so dramatic and worrisome, and I don't worry about it. I know deep down that I'm a writer, and it's just a matter of time until it comes back, and when it does, it'll be good like it's always been.

It's like painting the same blank canvas over and over and over and over and over. Once the concept is known, you don't need to see two. And that was in the back of my head, that I was really done artistically with what I had created or pastiched.

The technical process which is interesting in it's own right but I think the creative process is what's more intriguing to me.

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on. But routinely when I finish a book, I think, "What will I do? Where will I get an idea?" And a kind of low-level panic sets in. And then eventually something happens. I don't know. If I knew how it happened I would repeat the process, but I don't know - something just occurs to me.

I find it inspiring and I always think when I'm working on something new, whether it's a new kind of character or a new kind of story or new kind of camera, it gets my creative wheels spinning.

I feel like a lot of time my writing is like having about twenty boxes of Christmas decorations. But no tree. You're going, Where do I put this? Then they go, Okay, you can have a tree, but we'll blindfold you and you gotta cut it down with a spoon.