Daniel Day-Lewis Quotes

This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.

People who aren't artists often feel that artists are inspired. But if you work at your art you don't have time to be inspired.

What you have felt and thought will by itself invent a new style, so that when people talk about style they are always a little astonished at the newness of it, because they think that it is only style that they are talking about, when what they are talking about is the attempt to express a new idea with such force that it will have the originality of the thought.It is an awfully lonesome business, and, as you know, I never wanted you to go into it, but if you are going into it at all, I want you to go into it knowing the sort of things that took me years to learn.

I definitely shut down sometimes. I always just go into my own little cocoon and write, and I surround myself with as much music as possible.

Talking about one's work releases the energy and tension to do and make.

That's just a part of being an artist: you can't write great stuff all the time, because if you did, then you'd be inhuman. The human side of people is that sometimes they fail.

The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration.

At 10 o'clock in the morning I'd go right in the studio. It feels good to be there in the morning before the day starts to mess with you - I don't mean in a negative way, but before I'd speak to a lot of people or get into anything, I'd go in there and just see what I felt. A lot happens in the morning for me in the studio.

Sometimes I go outside after a long stretch of writing and I'm surprised it's not raining. Or that it's daylight. Or that it's not the middle of winter. I don't know if that level of immersion is normal, but it's now I do things. I like it. It works well for me.

The painter must be solitary. For if you are alone you are completely yourself, but if you are accompanied by a single companion, you are only half yourself.

I think of there being two conditions that creative people go through. I think it's fear and curiosity.

Each time I sit down and write a play I try to dismiss from my mind as much as I possibly can the implications of what I've done before, what I'm going to do, what other people think about my work, the failure or success of the previous play. I'm stuck with a new reality that I've got to create.

I'm superstitious. I keep mum while I'm working on something.

Life becomes a lot simpler for a creative person when he or she finds the routine that works best. ... get in the habit of going through the routine every day, and on some of those days, you're going to be lucky and have done some good work. ... Go to your study, close the door, invent your confidence.

To have the ability to withdraw into oneself and forget everything around one when one is creating - What, I think is the only requirement for being able to bring forth something beautiful. The whole thing is - a mystery.

A film is not done by one person. It's done by a lot of people. I love this whole collaborative aspect. When it works well, you end up with something better than any of us started out to do.

Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits. That's it in a nutshell ... In order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative.

There are no rhymes or reason, actually. Having said that, you know, cause there are people who are absolutely single-minded about their process and they can still come up with great work. But (what) I enjoy and it's the same, I suppose, as I became more of a family man, I enjoy, I enjoy an atmosphere where it, you know, doesn't have to be about conflict to get good results.

Less disappointing than life, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best.

I have a few methods that I use. One of them that kind of works but is a bit a boring is that I lock myself in the studio and I have four hours to work and come up with stuff. If nothing's sticking in four hours, then I can stop.

I do my stuff, my "mixtapes," as you say. We just need time to capture. After that, I do not know what he thinks, but for me, it is time to get things together.

Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable. Everything feeds into my creativity. But without proper preparation, I cannot see it, retain it, and use it.

I think writers, by nature, are more observers instead of participators. I am no where near as much of that as Bob Dylan. But when your antenna is up you are pretty fixated and there is not much room in your life for anything else.

You can’t take everything on. That’s why when people ask how does this film fit into my oeuvre. I say 'I don’t know. I don’t think in those terms’. If I did, I might become incapacitated by fear . . . How do you eat a whale? One bite at a time. How do you shoot a 150-day movie? You shoot it one day at a time.

My recent drawings that personal ones aren't fashion-related. I sometimes sit and draw people on the bus, or some fantasy hybrid animal. You know, wherever the hand will lead.