Mat Kearney Quotes

Like all artists, I go through creative spurts.

I don't understand how people live without creating.

Katagiri Roshi says: "Poor artists. They suffer very much. They finish a masterpiece and they are not satisfied. They want to go on and do another." Yes, but it's better to go on and do another if you have the urge than to start drinking and become alcoholic or eat a pound of good fudge and get fat.

In art, something comes of nothing. Out of the thin air and the ether, you create a story. And that is intensely satisfying.

I have some irrepressible pop impulses to write an appealing, concise song. And I also have some irrepressible kind of restlessness as well, and I need to keep myself interested. When I'm left to my own devices, there's a struggle.

I've always felt that there's a point where a piece seems to be alive, that is, living. And that's the point where I know the composition is finished.

The only thing in life that really gives me any peace is just being lost in the process of creating something, whether it's the film or painting and drawing, which has been a big part of my life, for a long time.

Even when I don't think I'm writing, I'm writing. There's some part of my brain geared toward making songs up, and I know it's collecting things and I know when I get a moment to be by myself, that's when they come out.

The creative act amazes me. Whether it's poetry, whether it's music, it's an amazing process, and it has something to do with bringing forth the old out into the world to create and to bring forth that which will rejuvenate.

No one was creating and I always wanted to be created on.

I know already the music I will write. But the words? I have not yet decided.

I don't know where my songs come from... If I knew, I'd know too much, more than we are allowed on this plane.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

Sometimes I'll come up with a lick that I really love, and I'll try to put the right words to it for years. Suddenly something comes to me that works just right.

Most artists have experienced the creative block. We get stuck in our work. We beat our head against the wall: nothing. Sometimes, it is because we are trying something at the wrong time.

One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come.

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 don't know what the creative process is. I don't know how to trick it into starting or how to egg it on.

I create from a place of passion. It's like a pregnancy, where you create from a place of passion, and then it grows, and then before you know it, you want to push that baby out.

Songwriting is a burst of inspiration and then a long bit of work and a tremendous bit of desperation.

I'm really happy when I'm actively creating things. When I'm frustrated and not excited, it's because I haven't written anything in a month or so.

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.

My struggle over the years has constantly been, it only takes 10 minutes, or an average shower, to come up with a mini-series or two, but it takes a year to draw them. So for me, it's been just trying to find a way to get all these ideas and all these incidents on paper.

That's the worst and best thing about being in the studio, feeling completely lost and not knowing how to put the final touch on something. But once you find it, there's nothing like that feeling.

I get writer's block all the time. The only way I can write what I consider to be good lyrics is to put myself through the mill.