Tom Stoppard Quotes

I am an artist, you understand? For me, a picture is like poetry. When you make art, this is not coming from an intellectual place. It's coming from the deep side of your unconscious, your soul.

Works of art inspire me to compose.

All my work comes out of my life.

I've always had a certain fascination. It's basically paint what you know, and this is what I grew up with.

Unlike a lot of choreographers, I don't always start with the music. I often start with a visual artist, and then find music that fits the world of that visual artist.

My painting does not come from the easel.

No, I never had any dreams. The process of art is a dream in itself. The artist just doesn't... you work out something. It's yours. You don't have to go to sleep to do that. You do that on the canvas.

When you're an actor or any kind of artist, you use your life as something to draw from in every experience.

My whole life, I've always had to be surrounded by creative things. I find it relaxing to be in touch with creations by other people.

All my inspiration comes from life. That's how it never stops, in a way.

A part of my kind of design and inspiration ethos is that I carry around a leather notebook and I sketch in it, doodle in it, write notes in it, and I put pictures in it.

So much of what we do as artists is a combination of personal experience and imagination, and how that all creeps into your work is not so linear.

I really believe that every character comes from the well of the artist.

Growing up, I enjoyed drawing, but it was always in the service of an idea. I drew all the time, and I enjoyed making.

No one can be an artist without a rich inner life.

Whatever's going on with me at the time of writing is going to find its way into the piece. If that doesn't happen, then what the hell am I doing? So if I'm writing 'Inglourious Basterds,' and I'm in love with a girl and we break up, that's going to find its way into the piece.

As a musician, it's only natural that my music mirrors my life.

I try to put my own history in my work.

I saw that my best work was my most personal work, which is odd, because my fiction is very far afield and has nothing to do with my life.

Because it's visual art, a lot of it comes from childhood experience but then a lot comes from the visual language - in advertising and stuff like that - which is around us.

I think your life informs your art.

It present to allow me to ask myself questions about what I'm doing. I think that's what visual art does - it either reminds you of something or allows you to question something. I don't know why Robert Motherwell; I love so many different artists.

I'm interested in art, and I think about the process of making art. It's part of my personality, my experience of the world, so it ends up in the movies. It's where my head is.

Why my interest in writers? Well, I'm one, and many of my friends are writers. I know what it's like to write. I'm interested in the creative process. I'm fascinated by the disparity between who we are on the outside, and what we have bubbling away inside us.

I don't think events in your life affect your music.