James Turrell Quotes

I feel I'm all over my movies. I know my movies are all over me.

There's never been anything I didn't love that I didn't connect with on a personal level because, to some degree, I projected upon it.

My work is has always been very, very personal.

I'm not gonna do the same, tired, standard 'I was born in a log cabin...' kind of book. There's so much more I want to do.

The key to good art is to make something that means something to you.

I love songs that are very autobiographical.

I always try to find some part of a character that exists in me and plug that in.

I made the character as much of myself as I could.

Whoever wants to know something about me - as an artist which alone is significant - they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognise what I am and what I want.

I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.

I think there's always pieces of yourself that bleed into your character. That's inevitable.

I think it's nearly impossible to write something fictional without having it be about yourself in some way or another.

For me it's all about personal vision; is there something about a subject that uniquely speaks to me.

I can achieve that by personally relating the words that I am saying to something I have known in my life.

I love writing and directing because it's great therapy. Every project I've done, there's been a personal connection.

The people in my songs are all me.

I do not feel any artist can produce great art without putting great personality into it. It is always a piece of you that goes on the screen or the canvass.

I think if a character appeals to you, there are certain parts of yourself will come to the fore and other parts that will play down.

If the picture speaks to me, if it tells me something about myself, then I want it. Then I have to have it.

I see bits and pieces of me in all the characters in my films.

My songs are just little letters to me.

When I left the Royal College, I decided I would only make paintings that I would want to look at myself, that felt close to my life.

My work is intensely personal.

I make films for the 16-year-old in myself sometimes.

The reason that I'm an actor, or an artist, is ultimately because I'm trying to paint a self-portrait, and the most complete and beautiful self-portrait that you can.