Scott Cohen Quotes

Art is for the artist is only suffering through which he releases himself for further suffering.

For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.

I'm a fairly tormented artist, and I'm less willing to indulge myself in self-pity, outside of songwriting.

Is an artist much more than a beggar?

You write five different things, and none of them work, and then suddenly something does, and you ask yourself, 'Why did that last one work?' I think that's the way the artistic mind works. All writers and artists of all kinds often don't know why things work.

I'd say, at the end of the day, you know, from a songwriting practice standpoint, you write songs to make yourself feel something true and validating, and cathartic, maybe, and then whoever responds to it is, like, out of your control.

I know when I go to a poetry reading, I feel purged, exulted. You let the poet guide you through some kind of journey.

I don't have a burning desire to go out and document anything. It just happens when it happens. It's not a conscious effort, nor is it a struggle. Wouldn't do it if it was. The idea of the suffering artist has never appealed to me. Being here is suffering enough.

Comfort is the enemy of the artist.

I think a lot of actors, comedians, musicians, artists are drawn to this world, because you're allowed to excavate whatever it is that you're struggling with, and hopefully turn it into art.

All people are struggling to be creative in some way, and the artist is the one who has succeeded in this task of life.

The artist does not really create; he discovers.

When I write, I tend toward melancholy, and the few times that I've tried pure joy in music, it doesn't really work that well. The joy can be through catharsis. I think that's what I do well, and observation.

Often writing is like a struggle to get back to a kind of belated, quite impure virginity.

Everybody needs a release. Sometimes people mosh at my shows. That inspired me to make records to get the people more crunk. People need a release and I enjoy being an artist that can do that for people.

I do think of emotions as being on a circular path, so you can feel terrible and terrible and terrible, and then all of a sudden it becomes quite funny.

I think what you see [in Salome the play backstage] is an artist having this fit of temperament.

I'm the most mellow person offstage. I think it's just, going onstage lets me get out some frustration that I'm too shy to do in real life. Instead of doing it in private, I'd rather do it in front of 1,000 people who've paid $25 to see me lose my mind.

For me the journey of making a film is a journey of discovery as to what that film is. I mean what I do is what other artists do, painters, novelists, people that make music, poets, sculptors, you name it. It's about starting out and working with the material and discovering through making, working with the material the artifact.

So much of making movies is about discovery on the day, what you're figuring out. If you know everything going in, then it's not worth doing - it's already done. I'm interested in finding people who I think have a voice - and a very specific voice.

Everybody loves a sad ballad because it's cathartic. For artists, in a lot of ways, that's sort of our therapy sessions is when you're singing a song.

On "Tonight" I think I was torn dreadfully between writing what I wanted to write, but keeping it in a style that would follow up what I had just done. That's where I feel I was untrue to myself as an artist . . . that album and, to a lesser extent, "Never Let Me Down."

People are very uncomfortable when you call actors artists because there are a lot of actors out there that aren't artists - there are a lot of actors that are hired for very specific reasons that are shallow and have to do with sexual currency and what the industry thinks sells. Real actors are artists, they're expressionists.

I think in a way the great irony or paradox about America is that it makes it so hard for the sensitive person, the artist, the impressionable person, the person whose raison d'etre is to incarnate the creative will, rather than to just make money, and yet that extreme difficulty that the culture poses for us has created some of the best artists in the last hundred years.

People never regret when they come out of a movie and they've been crying. I think people need it. That's why people have the theater and live music, which is dwindling as well. I think people like to go see things and have an emotional, transcendent, universal human experience, but so often we're like, "Let's go watch Green Lantern," which we all know is just not going to do anything for our souls.