Francois Truffaut Quotes

I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

I don't know if I have a problem expressing joy, but the difficulty is in making an album, a piece of music that really does reflect life rather than the one dimension. I have a problem in trying to make a complete trip record.

When I write, I tend toward melancholy, and the few times that I've tried pure joy in music, it doesn't really work that well. The joy can be through catharsis. I think that's what I do well, and observation.

I think that I get different kinds of joy out of directing a film and acting, and it's sort of necessary to just be doing one and focusing on that. I'm in awe of anyone who tries to be an actor-director, so I couldn't really see that.

I feel satisfaction at the end of the day when I've written a scene that I really like or when I write a good line of dialogue that I read out to my wife or something like that. But there's also days where it's just bloody agony and I go, 'ugh, this is such crap! Why did I think I had any talent?

The marrying of an actor and his whimsical and theatrical vision is very enjoyable, because he wants it to be filled with something honest, truthful, human, soulful, substantial.

My work is incredibly important to me personally. It brings me joy and it brings me life and it brings me meaning. It doesn't necessarily have to be important to the people who read it.

I think that, when you're writing your songs, there's always a debate about whether, is that you in the song? Is it not you in the song?

I just wanted to perform. I just wanted to perform in whatever capacity, whether it was acting, singing, dancing, comedy - whatever it was, I just loved it and felt at my absolute happiest when I was performing for people.

Emotionally, it was the hardest 33 days of my life, but it was worth it because the result is that this album is 100 percent me. It’s heartfelt, real, bold, honest, vulnerable, hopeful, strong, poetic, bluesy, gritty, pretty, and simple.

We don't make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.

The joy of the creative process, minute by minute, hour after hour, day by day, is the sublime path to true happiness.

the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat

The thing that I love most about being on stage is making people happy...It's my job to do that, and I enjoy it.

When I am halfway there with a painting, it can occasionally be thrilling... But it happens very rarely; usually it's agony... I go to great pains to mask the agony. But the struggle is there. It's the invisible enemy.

Writing screenplays is incredibly hard. I can't call it joy. Writing Novels? Joy. Directing? Joy. Writing Screenplays? That's where you pay all your dues.

She said writting novels was like childbirth: if you truly remembered how awful it got, you'd never do it again.

No; for instead of delivering myself up to the full enjoyment of the as others do, I am always troubling my head about how I could produce the same effect upon canvas; and as that can never be done, it is mere vanity and vexation of spirit.

I do not suppose that anyone not a poet can realize the agony of creating a poem. Every nerve, even every muscle, seems strained to the breaking point. The poem will not be denied; to refuse to write it would be a greater torture. It tears its way out of the brain, splintering and breaking its passage, and leaves that organ in the state of a jelly-fish when the task is done.

I had no idea about where I was going. I had no sense of art as anything other than a problem to be fixed, you know, an itch to be scratched. I was in that studio trying my best to feel content with myself. I had, like, a stipend. I had a place to sleep. I had a studio to work in. I had nothing else to think about, you know. And that's - that was a huge luxury in New York City.

A movie tends to box you in, at least as far as the aesthetics. You have an incredibly kinetic experience, which is the joy of cinema.

To me, a perfect album talks about the hard stuff and the fun and caring stuff.

I feel blessed that I get to be part of entertaining people in any capacity.

I would assume that there is a greater amount of joy for you in being able to write and help produce your own stuff and make a decent living, but not get rich versus always doing the other stuff that you don’t write, and make more money.

I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.