Damon Lindelof Quotes

There are probably seven persons, in all, who really like my work; and they are enough. I should write even if I were the only patient reader, for my aim is merely self-expression.

It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about what's "too much" what's "enough" or if you're telling the "right" stories, just do good work.

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself.

You'll go mad trying to figure out what people want. I don't bother. I write the stories I want to read.

Personally, I've made myself a very small window of what I enjoy in this business, which is I love being a big part of the storytelling process.

I wanted to express myself more fully through writing and directing. It just feels like a package deal. Anytime you create anything, you try to exert mastery over your world.

Rather than trying to create an audience, just try and create music that feels good to you.

I want to tell stories that I feel for, and I don't want to be a sell-out.

I only make those films that I would love to watch.

I can never think about, 'Is this going to sell? Is this going to work on radio?' I just have to get in the zone where I'm like, 'Do I love this, or do I not love this?' Essentially it all comes down to that.

I'm having fun creating what I'm creating.

I want to create music that moves me, not just music that is going to get me famous or make someone at a label happy.

We don't play to be seen. I'm addicted to music, not audiences.

I try not to think about the idea of reaching more and more people, because once you get in that mindset, I think you lose the point of why you're doing it in the first place. Still, the best feeling I ever get is when I finish a song, and it exists, and it didn't exist before, and now it's there, and it makes me feel a certain way.

The last thing I think about when I'm making music is its reception.

if I'd thought that nobody would like it as I was writing it, I would have written it even more. But I never think of the audience. I never think of people reading. I never think of people, period.

If you imagine the world listening, you'll never write a line. That's why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

I'm writing for the sake of writing music. Whether it gets heard or not isn't an issue for me. It keeps my own juices going and my mind active.

If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

People who write for reward by way of recognition or monetary gain don't know what they're doing. They're in the category of those who write; they are not writers. Writing is simply something you must do. It's rather like virtue in that it is its own reward. Writing is selfish and contradictory in its terms. First of all, you're writing for an audience of one, you must please the one person you're writing for. Yourself.

It'd be negligent to say that I don't want to be at the top of the charts. Of course I do, it's proof that your song is being heard. But I think it's more about the work for me and being proud of what I'm doing in music than what people think about my music. I want to like my music before you like it. I don't want to sell anything that I don't really like. I don't want to sell myself short just to get to the top of the charts. It doesn't feel that great. Feeling proud of your work feels greater than being at the top of the charts.

All you can do as an artist is do what you think is an extension of you. You put down on paper ... who you are. That's what being an artist is all about. And when it gets done, you don't look back at it and say, Oh, I could have done that better.

The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book, is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publisher and the readers can and will come later.

When I'm writing, I really want to satisfy myself. I've got a story that I am working on and struggling with, and I want to tell it the most effective way I can. That's really what I struggle with. And the thought of who may be reading it may be there somewhere in the back of my mind - I'll never say it's not there because I don't know - but it's not really what I'm thinking about.

It's probably simply a matter of temperament that I never stopped to wonder if I could "match" what I had done, never choked off my writing by competing with myself, or with anybody else for that matter. My ambition was absolutely centered on the work itself, never on what it would bring me, or "who" it would make me. I never cared about that at all.