Maynard James Keenan Quotes

I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it.

When you're trying to paint a portrait of a very specific world, you're trying to show what makes the world different. So, sometimes it means exaggerating certain kind of aspects, but I don't think it's that important or it's that much of an issue as long as you get an emotional truth across.

I think there are a lot of similarities between writing and music. Music is much more direct and much more emotional and that's the level I want to be at when I'm writing. Writing is much more intellectual and indirect and abstract, in a way.

In art, as long as you have ideas and think, you are bound to deform nature. Art is deformation.

When you want to transcribe an idea truthfully from the page to the screen, it is not necessarily best to be particularly literal about it. It can be hard to convince people, specifically writers, of that.

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

In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative.

Adapting a novel is not really about being faithful to every word and every moment the author has created. It's more about that same story being filtered through somebody else's sensibility.

In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view and to be conceptual with a picture. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative.

I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don't think that's a painter's business. He just paints paintings without a conscious reason.

I think writers like to see how people bring their words to life, and it's always surprising. Always, no matter what, whether it's good or bad, it's always surprising because a whole human being is coming to that piece of writing.

You can sometimes get your own feelings across more strongly if you pretend that you're singing it from someone else's angle. But it's always from me. It's just a new way of framing it.

I have a slight controversy with the Dogme brethren because I've been saying that rules are to be interpreted; not that I haven't followed the rules, because I don't see the point of submitting yourself to a set of rules if you don't follow them. But having said that, it is always a lot of interpretation.

You make a movie, and if somebody reads something into it, then great, more power to him.

My job is to make images and leave the decision-making and conclusion-drawing to other people.

I believe art has to take responsibility but it should not give up being art.

I think it's really the job of the composer, the artist, the painter, the writer to present people with options. I'm just really reflecting the thoughts and actions around me.

I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.

As an artist you have the luxury of maybe presenting an issue in a certain way, as opposed to actually solving it.

The role of art in society differs for every artist.

To me, the ultimate crime in an adaptation is the crime of reverence. A novel is one form of media, a screenplay is another, and a movie is yet another. There's even reverence to a screenplay.

To me, the job of the artist is to provide a useful and intelligent vocabulary for the world to be able to articulate feelings they experience everyday, and otherwise wouldn't have the means to express in a meaningful and useful way.

If you judge everything by how photographically real it looks, then you're missing out on a lot of what art is about and what communication is. There are ambiguities in life, and that should be reflected in art, cinema, and storytelling, I think.

The function of the artist is to invent, not to chronicle.

I think plays deserve other interpretations. They should live on, and other people should should take their hand at them. I'm very supportive of that.