Thom Yorke Quotes

I have an active imagination, and music opens the floodgates of that area of my brain.

I sometimes listen to music to get into some place that I need to get. I don't think it's because I have a musician as a father that I do this - most actors do.

The arts have always been in and around my life.

To me, art begets art. Painting feeds the eye just as poetry feeds the ear, which is to say that both feed the soul.

The way I create music is maybe like a painting, to compose in a more visual way. Basically it's the music that I want to hear- that's my inspiration and bottom line. I just try to get ideas from books, movies, paintings.

Be drawn to the visual arts for it can expand your imagination.

It'll help you be imaginative if you listen to classical music. It helps you understand dynamics and how important they are to create an environment.

Music. It's all creativity right here, right now.

Music is the doorway that has led me to drawing, photography, and writing.

I like characters. I like spirited characters whether they exist in fiction or real life. Whether they're the invention of artistic people or directors, musicians. I think music and art and fashion designers inspire me and I like characters.

I genuinely find the most meaningful thing I do is to make music, but also to absorb some sort of creativity.

The most valiant thing you can do as an artist is inspire someone else to be creative.

Music and literature have always and continue to be massive influences. Writers such as Seamus Heaney and Frank McGuinness. I have always admired the humanitarians that I knew growing up in Derry whose influence steered me in the direction of some of the work that I have chosen in the past.

I've been changed watching films or reading books or hearing music, and that helps you to live your life.

The last thing a young artist should do in poetry or any other field is think about what's in style, what's current, what are the trends. Think instead of what you like to read, what do you admire, what you like to listen to in music. What do you like to look at in architecture? Try to make a poem that has some of those qualities.

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it.

My whole life, I've always had to be surrounded by creative things. I find it relaxing to be in touch with creations by other people.

People go to movies or listen to music because they want to be inspired.

So much of what we do as artists is a combination of personal experience and imagination, and how that all creeps into your work is not so linear.

People like Jeff Buckley, the Mars Volta and Bjork made me listen to music differently. You learn the voice is an instrument you can do crazy things with.

The romanticised life, where all the great poetry and music and art of the world comes from, is great but it requires a lot of self-indulgence.

There's always the influence of music, film, art and the other things that drive me. I'm usually inspired by my environment and whatever is making me happy or mad.

The funny thing is musicians often love to go to see visual art because you've got all these pictures to turn into metaphors.

I love 'Sunday in the Park with George.' I saw that when I was just, just starting theater school, and I remember singing 'Finishing the Hat' or at least reading the lyrics to 'Finishing the Hat' and other songs from 'Sunday in the Park with George' to my mom to try to explain why I wanted to be an artist.

My role as an artist is not to make changes [in society] but to inspire changes.