Francois Truffaut Quotes

I work very hard on getting the songs as direct and examined as I can before I go in the studio.

Most of my success, I feel, comes from being a good editor as opposed to a great writer.

You know as a director what you want, but the film is smarter than you, the film says no, the film says there's something more here.

That's what it is that you rehearse - the making of music, not the playing of notes as abstractions.

I never show anything to anybody until I've finished it.

I left science, then I went into art, but I approach things very analytically. I choose to pursue both art and architecture as completely separate fields rather than merging them.

You can either make it come around or you can't. By the time we would be ready to record a song, we would know for sure that it was the best way we could do it.

I like engineering, but I love the creative input.

Songwriting is like editing. You write down all this stuff - all this bad, stupid stuff - and then you have to get rid of everything except the very best.

I'm an intuitive musician. I have no real technical skills. I can only play six chords on the guitar.

I know what I want, and I know what needs to be done to make my performance better. So I do these little askings, about the lights and costumes. It's not the diva speaking. It's the artist who knows how it has to be done.

I didn't feel compromised as an actor, and allowed other people's fingerprints all over that aspect.

I wonder if I would have been less organic of a designer without my background. Maybe I would be more academic about designing, more methodical. I want things to be a certain way, and I'm very precise, but school itself wasn't that relevant for me.

When I'm working, I'm so narrowly focused on sound, language, rhythm, flow, that I rarely feel the emotion of the text. It's only after - long after - I've finished a piece that I can experience in any way its emotional charge.

I don't work out a lead section and practice it for a day and then lay it down. I don't do that. The first time I do something I think is expressive or really cool, that's what's actually on the recording.

When the business starts shaping the art, or the delivery of the art, then it's not right.

Right from day one, you know when you've written a good song.

I am usually protective of my work, not showing it to anyone until it has been redrafted and polished.

Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there's no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.

I don't really get into a big intellectual analysis of why I am going to do a certain script or not.

Everything I do is very visual and very aural, so I don't read music, and I draw as much as I write out lyrics.

Focus on your music and not technology.

I agree totally with Metheny regarding the sound influencing the way you play.

For me, the more time you can take and the more care you can take with songs, the better off you're going to be.

I study myself. I study film, and I make sure that everything's on point.