J. Tillman Quotes

Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is.

Opera is an exclusive art form, so it cannot be that popular. I just do what I love to do.

I distrust thought. The interior life is highly overrated. I don't like the wispy and the vague... or inductive logic in any kind of writing. I'm impatient with writers who make too much sense. The better things that I've done have come to me by instinct.

As an educator, I try to get people to be fundamentally curious and to question ideas that they might have or that are shared by others. In that state of mind, they have earned a kind of inoculation against the fuzzy thinking of these weird ideas floating around out there.

People simply learn to process information to the point where it doesn't serve true creativity.

I like to make people think a little bit.

All these actors who died before I was born, all the theaters and the artistic movements - all that stuff fills you up and makes you feel like you're the inheritor of all this information and of all its passion.

Undeniably the American art form, too. And yet more and more, we see films made that diminish the American experience and example. And sometimes trash it completely.

Generally, the French highly promote culture and the arts, and photography is in their blood.

Artistic development is a thing of the past, sadly.

The curiosity of the human mind is essential if you want citizens who think rather than accept the first nonsense they come to.

When it comes to art and science, people don't like a lot of either. Instead of being open to it, they're closed off about it.

My mother cared more about how you reasoned than about the conclusions you reached.

The books that help you the most are those which make you think the most.

Something is missing in our culture. We can't quite celebrate the scientific literary tradition.

I don't want your vote. I want something more important. I want your commitment to think. Because once you start thinking, I'll get your vote.

It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.

Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.

Intellectuals are people who manage the world in their head. They look at life and try to see some kind of truth, and if they cannot find it, they attempt to create it.

The arts stimulate imagination. They provoke thought. And then, having done that, all sorts of other things happen.

I much prefer STEAM to STEM. The insertion of the A is arts writ large, and when you learn how to think, that means that you actually need to understand how others have thought before you, how have others made sense of the world.

That's what as an artist you always try to do. To try to be a sharper mind than the average person.

I want to show people it's not elitist to be a deep thinker.

My lab is the place where I put my brain out on my fingers.

The imagination is an innate gift, but it needs refinement and cultivation; this is what the humanities provide.