Rostam Batmanglij Quotes

A very close friend of mine keeps reminding me that since about the age of 50, I've been saying, 'I'm finished. I haven't got another one in me.' But somehow you do.

I just like to choose projects that will allow me as an artist to make my art.

You don't have to be Picasso or Rembrandt to create something. The fun of it, the joy of creating, is way high above anything else to do with the art form.

Get into your own creativity. Sketch and paint with different mediums and follow your heart.

With art and the work you do, it has to be constantly dictated by what you're feeling and where you want to go with it.

I don't think anybody can create in a space where they don't feel comfortable.

I've said, for a long time, my favorite part of my career is when I'm creating a new thing where I'm pulling from a new place.

Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow… The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward

You can’t control what other people think about your art. Think about the part of yourself that you can control, which is your ability to be kind and loving and creative.

The one thing about being a creator, about being an artist, is that you get to explore your ideas. We're fortunate that we're in the position to do that, and I don't take it for granted.

I started to write songs. And I started to like what I was writing. I think it's a new way for me to express things that are closer to myself than when I play a role, because, of course, it's really not me. I'm finding a new way. I don't know what it's going to be. But I know that I will need to give it to people one day.

That's the artist's job, really: continually setting yourself free, and giving yourself new options and new ways of thinking about things.

I used to feel for years and years and years that I was very remiss not to have written a novel and I would question people who wrote novels and try to find out how they did it and how they had got past page 30. Then, with the approach of old age, I began to just think: “Well, lucky I can do anything at all.

Stop this agony of wishing Play it out Don't think, don't hesitate Curving back within yourself Just create... Just create

I do my stuff, my "mixtapes," as you say. We just need time to capture. After that, I do not know what he thinks, but for me, it is time to get things together.

You get as much out of rock & roll artistically as you put into it. There's nobody who can teach you. You're on your own and that's what I find so fascinating about it.

I work when I feel like I can do something that pleases me, that I think I can give a little more than I've given up to yesterday.

Absolutely, I think coming out has allowed me to align who I am with with my creative self.

I feel guilty because I want to act more than I want to write songs. I'm a person who likes to transition; I like to grow.

I'd like, each time out as a writer, to reinvent who I am and what I'm doing. That's one of the great pleasures and rewards of the occupation.

I have always just made things. I don't see what I make as being defined by a medium or aesthetic. It probably comes more from a fundamental restlessness, an attempt to create tools for questioning or understanding, and I have always been interested in using a wide spectrum of mediums to do this.

Anytime you write something, you go through so many phases. You go through the 'I'm a Fraud' phase. You go through the 'I'll Never Finish' phase. And every once in a while you think, 'What if I actually have created what I set out to create, and it's received as such?'

It is almost impossible to reconcile self expression with the creative act.

I just find my creativity manifesting a bunch of different ways.

Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing - then a work of art may happen.