Joe Anderson Quotes

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.

Photography is about finding things. And painting is different - it's about making something.

If I could bring 'The Tunnel' to life, I'd like to do it like that.

The more I see and know about life, the more ideas I have and the more I want to make art.

I get so much inspiration from my travels, but I also started an exercise where I write down so many words every week. Then I begin crossing them off. We create a grid of words and also images, but words for me are more ample because you can interpret them your own way.

Modeling isn't boring.

I carry a notebook full of sketches of pictures I want to take - they are really scruffy sketches, but at least I am going out there with a clear objective.

Writing, film, sculpture, music: it's all make-believe, really.

It is very difficult to make the ideas in my head come to life, but what is harder is making them look effortless.

An idea can only be materialized with the help of a medium of expression, the inherent qualities of which must be surely sensed and understood in order to become the carrier of an idea.

I've always had a creative urge and I get immense satisfaction from creating something because it feels like I'm making sense of the world and imposing order on it.

I look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?'

When I sing I have a lot of visions. Like what's happening now in my life.

I think of myself as a writer who photographs. Images, for me, can be considered poems, short stories or essays. And I've always thought the best place for my photographs was inside books of my own creation.

From an early age, I knew I would be unhappy if I wasn't doing something creative.

You have something that exists in your head, and getting that abstract thought from your head into something that actually exists is a difficult process.

Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make.

Then I decided to draw from and on my own imagination, and everything came out perfect.

I have a vision of life, and I try to find equivalents for it in the form of photographs.

A visual image in the hand of an artist is merely a tool to trigger a mental image.

Sometimes with Polaroids, the shot you want to get in your head doesn't happen. What it makes me do is be patient, I guess, or let go of that presumption of what the shot's going to be.

I'm not particularly good at doodling. I'll doodle the same face over and over again.

When I make a film, I don't watch a lot of other films. I read a lot; I try to read poems, things that can liberate my human condition, that make me go away... I spend a lot of the time doing nothing, just concentrating on the subject. Sometimes I'll sit in my chair for two or three hours without doing anything.

When I read something, I picture that scene in that detail. That becomes very similar to composing a photo in real life.

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.