John Sexton Quotes

I look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?'

At the age of 80, I'm becoming a visual artist. This could be my rebirth.

I want to liberate my imagination and my mind with every kind of movie. That is what I wanted to do all my life.

Photography gives you the opportunity to use your sensibility and everything you are to say something about and be part of the world around you. In this way, you might discover who you are, and with a little luck, you might discover something much larger than yourself.

What it all boils down to for me is having the enthusiasm to do something for enjoyment and being stimulated by what's around you. That's what photography does for me.

I admire a lot of photographers, but I feel very disconnected from them at the same time. I don't feel I employ any technique like these people in my work. I guess if there's any influence from any of these photographers, it's this: They were concerned only with beauty. Not with 'cool.' I hope I'm doing the same.

I'm happiest when in front of the camera, and I didn't know it until I got up there.

The camera is a remarkable instrument. Saturate yourself with your subject, and the camera will all but take you by the hand and point the way.

Photography has been a passion of mine since I was 15. After my kids were born I found myself incorporating my photography into different art endeavors and from there it just blossomed.

For me, drawing is a question of death and life. Every day I draw, I write, I do something.

It was not until I was in my forties, in the fifth decade of my life, that the sense of place, the spirit of place, became of paramount importance to me. It was then that I began my travels, that I discovered, through photography, the quality of light, and that I gradually became able to paint the mood of place.

I travel, I read, I write, I have other lives. But when I have a camera, I know that's my country, my island.

The more I see and know about life, the more ideas I have and the more I want to make art.

Some guys can run fast, some guys can sing, I found I could take photographs that people were interested in.

It's a question of dropping the armor and getting up and doing the work you want to do. And film at first is frightening because you are like, 'What's that camera doing?' But then it becomes family and therefore a really wonderful experience.

Being involved in movies is my passion. What's gotten me off the mat is the sense of the child in all of us. I feel like the same guy as I did back in the mail room, but with more wisdom, from the depths of experience to the heights.

I left Jamaica for a while, because as an artist I need to experience different things, see the world, have different energies. Living in one place is not good for me.

Being a photographer is like listening to music. If you have a camera, by just living your life you're bound to find some things that are worth taking a picture of. You don't have to be an audiophile to have taste in music. It happens through osmosis.

Songwriting is like going to church. I'm connecting to something, and it's rewarding in really important ways. I don't need to share it with anyone to feel good about it.

I wanted to become an artist because it meant endless possibilities. Art was a way of reinventing myself.

Experience is the best teacher of all. And for that, there are no guarantees that one will become an artist. Only the journey matters.

You can't write about stuff you don't know about. You have to live it. You have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Live life to be a good songwriter.

For me, drawing is a way of navigating the imagination, and it remains the fundamental vehicle of my practice. Drawing allows me to be at my most inventive.

I was a loser, a bad kid, I wasn't really into anything, and then someone gave me a camera and I found that this was the thing I wanted to do.

Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.