Meryl Streep Quotes

The artist is inherently a romantic to some degree, and as such, I believe in a muse. But I don't try to analyze too much where it comes from.

My discussion with Keith Richards about the creative process led me to believe that there's an invisible presence of a stream of ever-flowing creativity that we overhear-all you have to do is pull up the antenna and dial it in. This presence allows you to maintain your sense of origin and move forward.

Take a step, breathe in the world, give it out again in story, poem, song, art.

The only thing I know for sure about the creative process is it always comes back. Magically. When there are no creative juices and nothing is coming to me - if I wait - it comes!

I'm a sponge, the more I absorb, the more I am able to articulate my vision, as artists do, like Picasso. I'm an artist in that light. I went from being an artist to an artiste.

You paint the way you have to in order to give. That's life itself, and someone will look and say it is the product of knowing, but it has nothing to do with knowing, it has to do with giving.

I personally just love movies about the creative process.

Becoming an artist does not merely mean learning something, acquiring professional techniques and methods. Indeed, as someone has said, in order to write well you have to forget the grammar.

That's what's great about the arts. Everything inspires you, and you get a chance to grow from watching other people and how they do their work.

There's an element to songwriting that I can't explain, that comes from somewhere else. I can't explain that dividing line between nothing and something that happens within a song, where you have absolutely nothing, and then suddenly you have something. It's like the origin of the universe.

People have talents that are different. Where does the creative flow come from - inside us or from a higher power? I don't ask any questions. I just write it down.

You can't slot a time and a space and think 'ok now it's time to sit and compose.' It just doesn't work like that for me.

As a composer, every project begins with either a blank sequence or a blank manuscript and for the first couple of days you cover and experience every emotion under the sun. Fear being the main one.

All this angst, all this stuff we all feel, is just tied to making art. It's so ancient.

Writing is the starting point from which all goodness (and crappiness) flows.

As in a love affair, two creative people can destroy themselves trying to recapture that youthful spirit, at twenty-one or twenty-four, of creating without even being aware of how it's happening

I don't tend to say it's time for one of this or that genre. Things flow to you in a strange way, and why you bump into a certain kind of thing in one moment is...it's hard to explain.

I don't understand how people live without creating.

How many of you are creative? I don't know, but for me, when you make a bunch of things over time and then you keep them... you forget. I look through my sketchbooks and I'm an audience for myself.

I'm a bit like a sponge. When I'm not writing I absorb life like water. When I write I squeeze the sponge a little - and out comes, not water but ink.

The muse whispers to you when she chooses, and you can't tell her to come back later, because you quickly learn in this business that she might not come back at all.

You know a trillion times more about art than me. But I’ve learned that it isn’t necessary to know all that much. You just make what you wanna see, right? It’s a game, right? It’s like being paid for dreaming.

Another thing about creation is that every day it is like it gave birth, and it's always kind of an innocent and refreshing. So it's always virginal to me, and it's always a surprise. ... Each piece seems to have a life of its own. Every little piece or every big piece that I make becomes a very living thing to me, very living. I could make a million pieces; the next piece gives me a whole new thing. It is a new center. Life is total at that particular time. And that's why it's right. That reaffirms my life.

In the same way, I can wake up with a very positive idea of what I want to do for my collection, and be completely desperate at night regarding the same thing. And I do a lot of other things too: Writing for me is almost as important as drawing my collection.

If I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often. It’s a mysterious condition. It’s much like the life of a Catholic nun. You’re married to a mystery.