Daniel Day-Lewis Quotes

I still haven't made a film that defines who I am.

That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.

Every good picture leaves the painter eager to start again, unsatisfied, inspired by the rich mine in which he is working, hoping for more energy, more vitality, more time - condemned to painting for life.

I've gone seventy-nine hours without sleep, creating. When that flow is going, it's almost like a high. You don't want it to stop. You don't want to go to sleep for fear of missing something.

The little dissatisfaction which every artist feels at the completion of a work forms the germ of a new work.

It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.

I create work, and I devote myself to the creative process, and I try to, you know, stay pure in that process and be worthy of the messages that I receive.

I think that it's important that actors keep getting challenged every day. For every creative person, it's a terrible moment when they say they have done all they want to do.

When I'm working on something, if I went to an exhibition of an artist I respect, then I usually come home quite depressed and look at what I'm doing and throw it all away and start again.

To be an artist is to doubt yourself and try harder.

The '90s weren't my finest years artistically. I wrote some good songs in there, but in terms of my vision of getting the paint on the canvas, that was not my best time. I didn't like the fact that I had fallen into mediocrity.

Actually, after 'All Love Lost' I was so drained creatively that I didn't have any clue where I wanted to go. So I just started from scratch.

When I work with Future, it's almost like a work of art.

That's always the time to quit - when you have nothing to say as an artist and creative person.

There was this moment, particularly after I had my first child, where I felt like, 'I don't know if I'll ever make a record, or if this is always going to be something just floating around in my head.'

I think around 2015 and 2016 I ended up in an identity crisis, artistically. I didn't know what direction I was going in. I'm a perfectionist and I want to be truthful to my beliefs, if you know what I mean.

To be and to be creative are synonymous. It is impossible to be and not to be creative. But that impossible thing has happened, that ugly phenomenon has happened, because all your creative sources have been plugged, blocked, destroyed, and your whole energy has been forced into some activity that the society thinks is going to pay.

I had wrung impressionism dry and I finally came to the conclusion that I know neither how to paint nor how to draw.

I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.

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 doubted my creative spirit three years ago and God showed me a way to praise Him through song. It opened the door to a whole tapestry of images and concepts that were brand new for me and I continued on that path.

When I can no longer create anything, I'll be done for.

I always thought old age would be a writer’s best chance. Whenever I read the late work of Goethe or W. B. Yeats I had the impertinence to identify with it. Now, my memory’s gone, all the old fluency’s disappeared. I don’t write a single sentence without saying to myself, ‘It’s a lie!’ So I know I was right. It’s the best chance I’ve ever had.

If life ever stops inspiring us to write, it's time to stop doing what we do.

If you wanted to be a creative person and you are confronted with the sum product of mankind's creativity up to this moment in history, that's pretty daunting, like, "Where can I fit my voice in amongst all that?"