Andre Dubus III Quotes

With music, I get to a much darker place. Where I'm able to go with 'Portlandia' has a wider range, but also a brighter range.

Oh, I like going down the rabbit hole. You know, that's kind of my job. When you play Macbeth, you gotta dive down that one. The trick is figuring out how to do it with love and a sense of humor so you can pop back out again. But, kind of the actor's job is to go down the rabbit hole.

If I'm not crying while writing a song, I'm not doing it right.

There's a certain darkness to Slipknot, but at the same time, there's a very strong dose of positivity. Stone Sour is the same way. There's a certain melancholy that comes with the slower stuff, but at the end of the day there's also that other side that is very positive. It's all how you deliver.

I think if you know one direction, then you can feel the other one. I don't think you can be truly, insanely joyous if you haven't ever felt the flip side of it.

It feels like when novelists say they find their characters are doing things they never thought they'd do, the material comes alive, and that's how I feel making music.

When I write songs, I write from a lot of perspectives.

Often when you're working on dark material, the atmosphere is fun.

Writing's another expression of art, really, that I'm just kind of discovering as I go.

I could write songs on the beach, but the interior darkness, we have it all. We have it.

It's hard to find a book that's safe to write. Because one always goes to dark or difficult places.

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.

The writer's joy is the thought that can become emotion, the emotion that can wholly become a thought.

Heartbreak allows us to also experience joy and love but you have to walk through heartbreak to even know what joy is. Heartbreak is a constant and it is even necessary. It allows us the opportunity of introspection and exploration. Those processes are what is necessary to write and engage in the arts.

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy

To be an artist is a blessing and a privilege. Artists must never betray their true hearts. Artists must look beneath the surface and show that there is more to this world than what meets the eye.

One of the hardest things to do is to paint darkness which nonetheless has light in it.

And this is the way a novel gets written, in ignorance, fear, sorrow, madness, and a kind of psychotic happiness as an incubator for the wonders being born.

I knew that when it came time for me to finally make my own album, it wasnt going to be about being a jock. It had to be more personal and intimate.

Depression is a real demon in the woods for a lot of creative people, you know? It's part of what the documentary is trying to be about for me, finding balance, where the beauty that is attainable in the creative arts can be matched with the scratchy roughness of regular life.

One, something emotional has to be at stake. There has to be something important for me that I'm writing about. And then two, I have to have a formal idea. Something has to be being worked out in poetry.

Sadness takes up the pen more readily than joy.

Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation.

When you're writing, it's rather like going on a very long walk

Poems are always interested in what Ivan Illich called 'shadow work,' not least because that is no small part of their own way of working.