Lisa Cholodenko Quotes

Anyone who wants to know who I am can just read my lyrics - I've always written about who I am.

I've always written about things that cause me to feel something.

They lyrical content has grown more introspective and less abstract. I don't know if that's good or bad... Sometimes it feels a little raw to be putting so much of myself out there.

Acting is about giving yourself away, like the U2 song 'With or Without You.' You just don't stay behind a character and make people laugh or cry. At some point you have to take off that mask, and when you do, you're a human being, not just an actor. After all, I'm Catherine the person first. You share that.

Really, as a writer, I believe that if you're going to write about your own life, you need to do it as honestly and candidly as you are capable.

It's so easy for me to do a boy-bashing pop song, but to sit down and write honestly about something that's really close to me, something I've been through, it's a totally different thing.

I think that, for me, the great books like that, autobiographies, are great when the artists who write them throw caution to the wind and really put it out there as they saw it.

I'm not really interested in myself in my writing. I can't see myself in the songs, even though I know different parts of me are there.

I try as hard as I can to write from a personal place and be genuine.

A lot of my songs are about things that concern me personally, not a heightened version of myself or any of the characters that I play.

Coming off 'Reflection,' what we really wanted to do was be more vulnerable.

A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

Anyone who has problems, or worries, anyone who laughs and cries, anyone who feels can write. It's only talking on paper... talking about the things that matter to us.

You've got to show your soul otherwise you're just a piece of equipment.

I've found that in now having experienced what it's like to make records and just through growing up in general that you should be expressive about what's affecting you instead of trying to sing about a subject just for the sake of other people getting something from it.

Definitely, there is a sense in my writing that people now know me in a personal way. And to an extent, that's true because I write about very personal things, and I use the personal often to contextualize some of these sociopolitical issues that we're dealing with. And to an extent, they're right. They know something about me.

The writer needs to react to his or her own internal universe, to his or her own point of view. If he or she doesn't have a personal point of view, it's impossible to be a creator.

If I'm writing strictly for others, how does that show what I'm experiencing or thinking? I just got to a point where I realized I could be as personal as I wanted to be and people could relate to those situations if they so choose.

I have done a lot of work internally to find out who I am, what voice Eamonn Walker has and how he wants to put it out there.

All my songs come from me because I only seem able to write about myself and my experiences.

Poetry takes courage because you have to face things and you try to articulate how you feel.

In some ways it's taken me decades to come clean and make honest work - and still to this day, sometimes I find myself wanting to hide behind my work and deny the more biographical aspects.

You know, I've sung a lot of emotional songs in my life, but when you're writing it yourself, it's very difficult to decide what to reveal.

When you write, no matter what, it ends up personal.

'Beautiful' was something that I kept really close to my heart, that I kept from a lot of people for years and years. It's my story. And I think that was the first impression I needed to give to people as a solo artist. This is who I am; this is what I'm about.