James Wolcott Quotes

Artists are always looking for new things and fresh ground and fresh air. If it feels new to me, there's a chance it'll feel new to the audience and we'll have found something.

It's fun because you can escape and learn about what other people's minds have created. It inspires you to think maybe you could come up with a creature yourself. I like that.

Well people love to go dirty and stuff like that. It's funny, because even really dirty things can kind of inspire, but all things inspire really dirty improv and monologues. So then really dirty things can inspire the exact opposite. It's kind of a crapshoot.

I don't understand how people live without creating.

I think that other people covering my work is really exciting... Im really open to that kind of thing because I think interpretation is an art form.

Telling people how to be creative is easy - being creative is difficult.

People should be free to take whatever they want from music and I think that over time I realized that different people always find different things in my songs, which is really good.

There are no fascinating people, only their works are fascinating.

All there is to writing is having ideas. To learn to write is to learn to have ideas.

Once they're on paper, they're gone. I like to do as much with the words, as far as image goes, so that it's really left open for a lot of things, even though I remember a specific impression of something I had at the time. I can't say a song is about this or that; in fact, I wouldn't even want to. I just prefer to have people live it anyway they want. Because it's theirs after that. There's nothing I can do about it anymore

Creativity is an infinitely renewable resource - you are not going to run out of it - so don't be afraid to use it.

I love art. I love music. It's more about the lifestyle you yourself have - that's the most inspiring thing. The way you share relationships with the people around you.

Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run

I really love art and I always have in every single different form and I just hope that I'm able to give some art that will touch some people and help them to be more positive and stronger.

Jean Renoir once suggested that most true creators have only one idea and spend their lives reworking it, but then very rapidly he added that most people don't have any ideas at all, so one idea is pretty amazing.

I'm just always making things that are personal but hopefully also inspiring, and share not just my story, but other people's stories.

We artists can only go so far as the people can follow us. We are not alone, we are part of the system. We can take risks, but if you want to go to the peak of your consciousness, you may very well find yourself alone. Even if you know how to translate what you see, maybe only ten people will be able to understand what you tell. But, if you have faith in your vision, and retell it again and again, you will start noticing that, after a time, more people will begin to catch up with you.

All my different kinds of artwork have been designed to inspire people to think. They may not always agree with me, but at least they will have some feelings and some passion about whatever it is.

The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.

I try to create paintings that are a window for the imagination. If people look at my work and are reminded of the way things once were, or perhaps, the way they could be, then I've done my job.

Lots of things inspire me. My friends and my family, obviously. I really like to travel, so very inspired by traveling and meeting new people along the way. Also, music and the arts, like film and television. I like to read a lot too; that stuff inspires me.

I might write four lines or I might write twenty. I subtract and I add until I really hit something I want to do. You don't always whittle down, sometimes you whittle up.

an artist is always seeking revelation.

Artists are the people for whom the world is not enough.