Mordicai Gerstein Quotes

As a breed, I think artists are never 100% satisfied with their work, and we will always want that little bit of extra time to put the final gloss on it.

As an artist, you're never happy with anything you do. It's part of the process.

I think that, right now, I am travelling in many different directions in my mind, on where I wanted to be. So much is wantin' to go back, but I still gotta move forward. But I think it's just that I'm my worst critic at all times, you know? And when I make somethin', it may be five or ten cuts later before I actually call it what it is. I've always been that kind of artist. I'm gonna put myself through the sweat for it, because I think, as an artist, that's what made me iller, is the fact that I didn't wanna just put out anything and everything. It's just a process, you know what I mean?

I'm one of those people that I make a song... then I write another song and then I'm like, 'But this song is so much better than this song,' and then I kind of ditch that song. It's a long process.

I can't live with art: I'd spend too much time tweaking it.

I just mean it's very difficult for me to watch my work, in some ways, because I am critical of what I didn't get across or I thought I was making one point.

I don't look at 'Deadpool' and think, 'Oh, that's a perfect movie.' I look at it and go, 'Oh, God, there's so much stuff I could do better.'

If you are an artist and you are honest, you are never good enough.

I've spent so long on some paintings that I no longer know what to think of them, and I am definitely getting harder to please; nothing satisfies me.

I would be the unhappiest person imaginable, confronted daily with disastrous works crying out with errors, imprecision, carelessness, amateurishness. I avoided this punishment by destroying them, I thought, and suddenly I took great pleasure in the word destroying.

I will never fix my architectural style and never be satisfied with my works.

I'm never finished with my paintings; the further I get, the more I seek the impossible and the more powerless I feel.

It took me 10 years to write a story that pleased me - that I could look at after it was published and not cringe.

If you are never satisfied with what you write, that is a good sign. It means that your vision can see so far that it's hard to come up to it. Again I say - the only unfortunate people are the glib ones, immediately satisfied with their work. To them, the ocean is only knee-deep.

It drives me crazy to do readings of my books, because if I read anything I've written in the past, I'd like to almost rewrite everything. If I could, I'd completely rewrite Fargo Rock City, and every sentence would be just slightly different. In all likelihood, most of them wouldn't be any better. Some of them would just be changed back to whatever form they used to be, before I second-guessed myself the first time.

Film wise, I invariably look at my work and reckon I could have done it better. I'm also conscious that I'm in a profession where we get more praise than we should compared to the usefulness of what we do.

I'd much rather wait till my material is up to par, in my opinion, than rush it just so I can stay in the limelight a little longer.

Writing can flow out when I'm feeling something strongly, whether that's joy, pain, fear, desire or anything else. The challenge is actually later, in the second or third or 100th draft of the music, when it can be so easy to cover up the original sentiments by making the music more ornate or cloaked.

I would say that I don't make music quickly; like, my process has been very slow, and my bar is very high, and I don't really rush to make music just to get something out there.

I've heard that many fine artists have to turn their 'finished' paintings to face the wall - otherwise, every time they walk past, they are tempted to pick up a brush and make small adjustments here and there.

I don't listen to my songs. The only time I do it is when someone points out a flaw in the end product.

Once I finish something, if I don't feel that it's absolutely fabulous, there's no way I would ever let it be recorded, I wouldn't even present it to a producer.

With Dr. Dre, he's a perfectionist. A lot of people ask why 'Detox' is taking so long. It's because Dre is somebody that is trying to top what he's done. Will he do it? I don't know if he ever will, but I respect that he's trying to do so. You have to wait for a masterpiece.

Art is something in which you are never an expert at any point of time. It's something you hone all the time and something which is elusive all the time.

I don't mind people liking or not liking me. If you make something and then in the back of your mind you think it could have been a bit better, that can hurt a bit.