Scott Walker Quotes

I got history solidly under my belt, reading Russian history and biographies. I couldn't change the facts. I could only play with how the people might have responded to the facts of their lives.

In general, I think my freedom of invention is not limited when I use historical characters.

I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.

For most people, creativity is a serious business. They forget the telling phrase 'the play of ideas' and think that they need to knuckle down and work more. Often, the reverse is true. They need to play.

While writing 'Half of a Yellow Sun,' I enjoyed playing with minor things: inventing a train station in a town that has none, placing towns closer to each other than they are, changing the chronology of conquered cities. Yet I did not play with the central events of that time.

I write them, I don’t explain them.

Anyone who says a movie about history is a historical document is crazy.

When J.J. [Abrams] called Lisa [Joy] and myself, he pitched us this idea of, what if we turn the structure around and started with the hosts. For us, that gave us a way to play with everything that we're interested in, all at once. It's the ultimate playground for us because we deal with questions about artificial intelligence, which is something I've long been fascinated by, but also human intelligence, or the lack thereof, human behavior, and interactive, immersive storytelling.

Part of the reason I make things realistic is, I don’t really want to have to explain my work. What I wish to communicate is done so people can make their own interpretation, and if it’s different to my idea it doesn't matter.

I'm like a movie director, so wherever I feel that I need to go over this type of beat, that's what I'm going to do, that's where I'm going to go.

The whole point of animation to me is to tell a story, make a joke, express an idea. The technique itself doesn't really matter. Whatever works is the thing to use.

The reason I got into this business was for the privilege to exist in different genres and different worlds and play out different realities.

Even at the time, I realised this couldn't be right, that this interpretation didn't fit with the rest of the lyrics. But that wasn't an issue with me. The song was about what I said, and I used to listen to it again and again, on my own, whenever I got the chance.

I think what's fun about the fairytales is just seeing what everybody interprets them as, which comes from the different directors and what they want to do with them.

Perhaps whatever there is in my work that may be really interesting to others and surely what is interesting to me, is the result of a sometimes successful effort to free myself from any idea that what I produce must be art.

I'm always interested in hearing how other people read and react to my songs. I hadn't thought of it in just that way. One of the things I love about doing things that are creative is that I feel like it's my right as an artist not to be affected by the reactions of those people that are going to hear my songs. But I also feel like it's the right of the people hearing them to have their own interpretations of what these songs mean. Sometimes people will see things that I don't see.

Film is very much about sitting around and talking about ideas, and that's the stuff that I love, but I haven't experienced that yet in the television that I've done so far. It makes me long for movies again because, creatively, I always have a much more fulfilling experience there.

If the director wishes to print it, then you have a series of choices, maybe millions of choices within that minute-and-a-half, or 80 seconds, or 2 minutes or however long or short the take is, you have all those choices committed to celluloid. I find that absolutely thrilling.

This is a fantasy fiddle tune. The part you fantasize is the fiddle.

Doing a film and saying, I've done a really dark film and now I have to do a comedy... That's not me. If a script comes along and it's dark I'll absolutely do it and take the consequences. I'm not fussed about the image that goes along with it.

Art does not imitate, but interpret.

Might we not say that every child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he creates a world of his own, or, rather, rearranges the things of his world in a new way which pleases him?

My ideas are not developed before I actually do the pieces.

I don't agree with most forms of censorship, and I especially don't agree with the idea that one needs to be from the same cultural, ethnic, or religious background as the subjects they portray in order to be qualified to portray those subjects. I believe that compassion and empathy should cross all of those category barriers, and the conversations art creates can be inflammatory initially, but I think are most often constructive and healing in the long run.

Writing for me, even what you call serious writing, is play.