Brenda Russell Quotes

When I finished a song that I thought was good, I thought, I don't know where that came from, so I have no idea if I can do that again. I'm talking like, a hundred and fifty songs down the line. I still feel that.

I've gone periods of maybe four months without writing anything, but it's not a problem. It just means something's building inside you, and it'll build and it'll build, and at some point it'll come out, and it does, and it usually comes out in three or four songs, and you play it that way, really.

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.

Sometimes I get in writing moods and I want to write a song every couple of days. Then sometimes I may not write a song for three weeks. It's just according to how it's hitting me at the time.

We all have fertile creative periods and times when we can't figure out how we ever did it.

A lot of my writer friends - some of whom are brilliant - work when the Muse calls them, for lack of a better description. You know, days of nothing, then this creative burst where they write for 36 hours straight fueled by caffeine and idealism.

I don't know where the ideas come from, and it's terrifying. They seem to be absolute flukes. When I was in my 20s, I'd walk around with a notebook all the time and make sure I wrote down anything that occurred to me. Now I'm just hoping that some sort of event will descend on me.

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I'll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I've written a whole song in an hour.

I think that's just part of how it is with making art. Sometimes you're just flooded with ideas, and then other times you're questioning all the ideas you ever had before, and everything is just... lame.

I'm not very prolific. I'm not good at sitting down as an artist and saying 'Okay, I need to put in my four hours today.'

Any working composer or painter or sculptor will tell you that inspiration comes at the eighth hour of labour rather than as a bolt out of the blue. We have to get our vanities and our preconceptions out of the way and do the work in the time allotted.

Whenever I finish a movie, I usually go through a period where I think I'll never have another idea. And then, somehow, you get another idea.

I feel like I spend most of my time in a state of writer's block! When things do come out, they come out quickly.

Even if you're not releasing songs, the act of creativity is important. That's the part I love, when you're in the moment. The rest of it I'm not particularly interested in at all.

The creative process requires a period of boredom, of being stuck. That's actually a very uncomfortable period that a lot of people mistake for writer's block, but it's actually just part one of a long process.

I tend to write first thing, and then do my drawing later. I like to draw at night. But often I go for long stretches without drawing, because I'm trying to figure out what I'm writing.

If I get ideas independently of the act of writing, they never really fit. So for me, there's no hanging out, waiting for inspiration.

When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come.'

When I get an idea for a song it would gel in my mind for weeks or months, and then one day just like that, Ill write it.

That's the best thing about writing, when you're in that zone, you're porous, ready to absorb the solution.

Writing songs has always been hard and easy. It's not always easy when you want it to be, and then sometimes it's just like turning on the faucet. That's just the nature of it.

I wrote 'Criminal' in 45 minutes when everyone else went to lunch because I had to have a hit. I can force myself to do the work, but only if someone is right up behind me.

I don't generally listen to music while working, but sometimes music can help me get past minor writer's block.

The cool thing about writing is that there is really never a typical day. Sometimes I get a rhythm going and head off to work every morning and come home at night. Sometimes I'll write for two days straight and then be utterly blank for the next two.

I get so many ideas for songs, but I'm so seldom disciplined enough to sit down and crank them out.