Shane Carruth Quotes

Photographers who come up with power never get accused of imitating anyone else even though they photograph the same broom, same street, same portraits.

All worthwhile writing... comes from an individual vision, privately pursued.

But I'm the only one who can paint the moon, because I'm the only one who knows whether that's right or not.

Even if you try to copy a film shot by shot, you still can't. It's still your own film.

In art, theories are as useful as a doctor's prescription; one must be sick to believe them.

I don't worry about what everyone wants to see. I make movies that please a writer, director and myself. I always think there are enough people smart as me and sensitive as me.

Copy nature and you infringe on the work of our Lord. Interpret nature and you are an artist.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

All our forms are unique - movies, music and literature - and you have to leave the person who is doing it to do their best.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want.

This is what it is the business of the artist to do. Art is theft, art is armed robbery, art is not pleasing your mother.

I read the book and I think, "Well, this is the movie we're going to make," and then someone else reads it, and they take a completely different movie from it. And both are valid.

One longs for a director with a sense of imagination.

If you've done a brilliant version it becomes something else.

What you're really after when you see a film or listen to a song is a singular vision, and I'm not sure how much of that you really get in Hollywood.

People will come up to me at shows and tell me that a song touched them in a completely different way than I wrote it. That's fun. Fans translating it in their own way.

I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'.

Every movie has its uniqueness. You just do your best and go with it.

My concepts are never bright ideas; they're never notions I think will sell or be trendy or attract new fans. I don't think that way. All I can do is sing from my life.

Nowadays I think it's really important that designers are really unique and individual.

I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.

Why should the composer be more guilty than the poet who warms to fantasy by a strange flame, making an idea that inspires him the subject of his own very different treatment?

You can't be trying to make a film that pleases all people, you know, so it's not a concern of mine.

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

I learned early in my writing career that if I try to tailor a song for someone else, I'm usually off base. They're usually looking for something from you with your character.