Ryan Adams Quotes

I've heard writers talk about "discovering a voice," but for me that wasn't a problem. There were so many voices that I didn't know where to start.

Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is like a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.

Maybe because I can't even put together an IKEA desk, I've never been tempted to think of my own poems as built objects - but I do sometimes imagine them as mathematical constructs.

I think the deepest thing is that many fiction writers tell stories but are not elegant writers. But, we're not writing journalism when we're making literature.

I don't think that there's much that sets me apart from other musicians, but I think there are definitely things that set me apart from other kinds of artists.

I never intended to be a documentary filmmaker. I think I became a documentary filmmaker because I had trouble writing, and I had trouble finishing things.

I have never been able to write with anything more than the left hand of my mind; the right hand has always been engaged in something to do with personal relationships. I don't complain, because I think my left hand's power, as much as it has, is due to its knowledge of what my right hand is doing.

I don't think comedians make an active decision to be a certain "persona." Comedians write the way they're going to write.

I write songs about things that I'm simultaneously trying not to think about.

You see what you think, you see what you feel, you are what you see If with the camera you can make others see it - that is photography.

I am an artist and a writer, and I do think that one always places oneself in the picture to see where one fits.

I do not think good art comes from comfort. While from a humanistic standpoint I would have much rather been at my home that I own, surrounded by friends and family and controlling my environment completely.

The guy who sits at the keyboard and types is so much smarter than I am. I think I got into writing so that I could spend as much time with that guy as possible.

I feel that in the past, my style has shown itself to be capable of handling dark and light in the same paragraph, or even in the same sentence. That's something I almost take for granted. I think it was more a concern to get the details right and persuasively recreate the world I was trying to write about.

I don't really do anything that isn't about writing, and I don't really know who I am if I'm not thinking about writing.

I think I am worthwhile just because I have optical nerves and can try to put down what they perceive. What a fool!

I never wanted to be a professional artist; I think that's limiting.

I try to be aware of what I'm concerned about, aware of how I feel about myself in the world, aware of how I feel about the issues of the day, but I guess I don't want to write essays in my head about my craft and maybe it's because I teach and talk about craft of other writers as a reader. I feel the moment I start doing that is when it's going to kill me.

I sometimes think I'm a mechanic. I just take pictures.

I think that my work is easy to understand because I am not a thinker, I am not a... How can I put it? I write the way I perceive, I guess.

Which is strange - I've always thought of myself as someone who writes out of difficulty. And I did do that, but I came out on the side of light more often than not.

I am a great artist and I know it. It's because of what I am that I have endured so much suffering, so as to pursue my vocation, otherwise I would consider myself a rogue - which is what many people think I am, for that matter.

I feel satisfaction at the end of the day when I've written a scene that I really like or when I write a good line of dialogue that I read out to my wife or something like that. But there's also days where it's just bloody agony and I go, 'ugh, this is such crap! Why did I think I had any talent?

When you make a record, your own record, and you don't even recognize it yourself, it's hard to think if anybody else is going to recognize.

There are many things I think about that never get to the point of becoming serious. In other words, I try to talk myself out of writing, sometimes for many years, and when I run out of arguments, I write.