Andrew Stanton Quotes

You can't plan to write a great song. It just happens to you. It drops in your lap. It's the same thing with a woman.

When I don't have any ideas, I pick up fabric and start working with it and something happens.

I don't consciously go out looking for themes. They attach themselves to me.

When inspiration does not come, I go for a walk, go to the movie, talk to a friend, let go... The muse is bound to return again, especially if I turn my back!

I don't pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.

Everybody knows that I don't have a muse. I'm not interested in that.

I don't go in search of ideas; I try to let them find me.

Every time I write a song I feel really lucky and kind of surprised. Not surprised that I wrote it, but just surprised that things exist that you don't know about.

I sometimes don't try to invent something. I wait for some kind of a direction - and it happens. I get an angle, for instance, and it just appears, and I say, 'Oh my God - that's it!'

Every song I've written is luck, I think; it's luck - 'How did that just happen?'

The muse holds no appointments. You can never call on it. I don't understand people who get up at 9 o'clock in the morning, put on the coffee and sit down to write.

When I was younger, I had conversations with friends about wanting to create something different. Every young musician probably thinks that. But it's difficult to do, because there are only so many words, notes, melodies, songs. But as soon as I stopped thinking and started feeling, it worked. I didn't realize it till I was done.

There's an element to songwriting that I can't explain, that comes from somewhere else. I can't explain that dividing line between nothing and something that happens within a song, where you have absolutely nothing, and then suddenly you have something. It's like the origin of the universe.

Inspiration doesn't really work like that - you're not looking out for it. Inspiration is something that tends to capture you rather than you capture it.

How many artists subscribe to the notion that creative success depends on input from the fickle muse or her modern avatar, mental illness? Probably very few.

I think people inspire me the most. If I meet a person who is incredibly complex, and all of a sudden, I start thinking in rhymes, that person could be a muse.

I believe sometimes we aren't always in charge of everything that we do creatively. We submit to things as we're going on our own journey.

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don't know why this one is different, but it is. You don't know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can't stop thinking about it.

I've learnt that the muse is like an angry girlfriend. If she comes knocking you better be home because if you're not, she doesn't leave a note saying pick up after 3 P. M. from the post office. The gift she had is gone forever.

Inspiration comes and goes when it pleases. It's independent of our desires, doesn't respond well to force, and refuses to be controlled.

So, I can't tell you the mentality behind the stuff, because that's thousands of hours manifested into one moment, maybe in the shower or driving down the road that the idea comes and the genius strikes and sometimes, it happens moments before you go to the ring.

The artist is inherently a romantic to some degree, and as such, I believe in a muse. But I don't try to analyze too much where it comes from.

All the films that I did, I didn't plan them. They just came to me.

Sometimes you have the feeling that some little imp is standing behind you and dictating to you, but he gives it to you slowly, drop by drop.

Philip Larkin didn't write for several years before his life ended. And when he was asked why he didn't write, he said the muse deserted him. And when I read that, it really had a profound effect upon me, sort of scared me. So that's why I think I have no right to assume that some thought is going to come... But I think, in my imagination, if it is it, there will probably be something else I'm interested in.