Blaise Pascal Quotes

I didn't realize I wanted to write about D.C. until after 2000. Even though I was a comedy writer, I stayed away from that subject on purpose. It took attaining some distance and perspective.

If you are writing something, you automatically create a certain distance. It can be very little. Even within the same city you imaginatively have a certain distance from your subject, and at the same time, you have to have a connection.

A creation needs not only subjectivity, but also objectivity.

The present is always unsettled, no one has had time to contemplate it in tranquillity . I was a painter before I was a writer and a painter never wants the subject right under his nose; he wants to stand back and study a landscape with half-closed eyes.

Once you make something you think it's awesome, but it's only after you listen to it for a few weeks then you actually get a proper perspective on it.

I really am a strong believer that with editing, it should take a long time. Even you yourself are not capable of making the right decisions; sometimes you need a distance.

I have always just made things. I don't see what I make as being defined by a medium or aesthetic. It probably comes more from a fundamental restlessness, an attempt to create tools for questioning or understanding, and I have always been interested in using a wide spectrum of mediums to do this.

A mentor long departed told me that the greatest gift in political life, in any life, is to view yourself objectively, at arm's length, to make an assessment of yourself. So whom do I rely on? I rely on myself.

I do find walking is fundamental to my creative process.

A person who's only suffering can't write a poem. There are choices to be made, and you need to be objective.

You could say that when you introduce humour to your work, you also step back a little from it. You create a distance.

Twyla Tharp put it together from the material I wrote and recorded over my whole career. I thought it was pretty good, but how objective could I be?

That's the great thing about songwriting: You have that time to have perspective and look back and think about all the things you'd want to say.

I find that the time that goes by is actually your best friend when you are making a record. The passing of time gives you perspective on what you recorded and what you wrote. If something sounds good to you 12 months after you recorded it then chances are pretty good that there's something valuable about the part or the song.

Science fiction, in its purest form, for me, it works the best when it's being used as metaphor to look at something from a one-step-removed process, to give a little objectivity and insight into something that, if you were applying it on the face of it, we'd all be too close to.

People say, 'How does having kids change your writing? Do you see the world through their eyes?' No - you just become a faster songwriter... In the old days, you'd be like, 'Oh I'm gonna work on this song for a few days.'

I'm just a member of the audience with each project I work on, and I hope to never lose that. It's my touchstone. It's the thing I never want to overanalyze.

I think sometimes you need distance to reflect.

I think anyone who lays a long trail of creative work over the years can't help but look back and wonder, 'What was I thinking?'

It's very rare I'll watch anything I'm a part of and think, 'I wouldn't change a thing.'

I'm really bad at knowing if something I've done is any good. I can't work it out; I can't be objective about anything I do.

If I'm astonished by what I've done, then I know I've been somewhere in the making of it but not during the making of it. Only after the fact. If I'm not astonished, then I've failed in the making of it.

I think music comes out of silence... and I have a lot of silent time, without a pesky guitar interrupting my thoughts.

I look at the big picture and try not to create with ego.

Painting on the ground was a cool challenge because you can't just stand back and see what you're doing.