Colleen Atwood Quotes

You have to transmit to them what it's like being in the theater. And it has to come from somewhere inside you and not by being like what somebody did last year.

I loved theater growing up, and my mom always took us to the touring productions that would come through town. We would go to Chicago all the time and see shows. I loved it.

The great thing about doing a series about the Broadway community is that the possibilities are endless.

As an actress, I think it's important to look back and realize that we aren't always quite as original as we think we are. There's this grand, textured history for us over the last 100 years of incredible writers, directors, and performers.

Their films would probably be better if they'd seen a few more films, which runs counter to this idiotic theory that you run the risk of being influenced if you see too much.

I was never so directly inspired by fashion. It always came from somewhere else.

I'm never aiming to make a movie like someone else's movie, but in order to describe a movie to someone else who hasn't seen it, you usually have to reference things they have seen.

You know, artists are influenced by other artists. We're all deeply influenced by what's around us; we don't make anything cold. Sometimes we think that we do. But within that, the most important part is that even though we're influenced, what are the levels of invention that we carry forth even as we've been influenced by something that's come before?

The poet is he who inspires, rather than he who is inspired.

I'm usually the last to see my influence in other people's work. People give me stuff and say "Oh look, this guy's ripping you off," and I'm like "What do you mean?" Often I see the people that I've ripped off filtered into my own work. In other people's work, I can only see specific, tiny little instances of inflections stolen from another artist.

When I write a page that reads badly I know that it is myself who has written it. When it reads well it has come through from somewhere else.

If you think a man draws the type of hands that you want to draw, steal ‘em. Take those hands.

A lot of the aspects of the world of the film are amalgams of things that already exist.

I tell poets that when a line just floats into your head, don't pay attention 'cause it probably has floated into somebody else's head.

All the best lyrics are written in ten minutes.

Art is the child of Nature.

Art is either revolution or plagiarism

I wasn't trying to do a play or do what Kevin Spacey did. I was trying to do my own thing with it.

We always worry that we are copying someone else, that we don't have our own style. Don't worry. Writing is a communal act. Contrary to popular belief, a writer is not Prometheus alone on a hill full of fire. We are very arrogant to think we alone have a totally original mind. We are carried on the backs of all the writers who came before us. We live in the present with all the history, ideas, and soda pop of this time. It all gets mixed up in our writing.

If you're a good composer, you steal good steals.

do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation

The idea comes to me from outside of me - and is like a gift. I then take the idea and make it my own - that is where the skill lies.

The best visual book I can think of is Lynda Barry's What It Is, but although I refer to it all the time it's not a creative writing book per se.

[Personal life] doesn't affect my creative process. It just gives me more subjects to talk about. Basically whatever you put in your music is how you want people to view you.

I tended not to be concerned about whether a song was going to be a hit when I wrote it. Because it became evident that none of us knew what was a hit and what wasn't. So I thought if I just write what I like, why shouldn't people like what I like?