Jason Newsted Quotes

Painting is just a hobby. I really don't think of it much more than that. But writing music and writing words... my life would feel as if it had a big hole if I took those away.

The only thing in life that really gives me any peace is just being lost in the process of creating something, whether it's the film or painting and drawing, which has been a big part of my life, for a long time.

Making music and writing kind of come from the same creative place.

The opening line from a journal can be the beginning of a song.

I enjoy so many different art forms; I don't just want to focus on acting. I love music. I love writing stories. And you need solitude to figure out your next step.

Art, whatever form it takes, requires hard work, craftsmanship and creativity. As a writer, I know my grammar, cadence, the music of prose, and the art of the narrative.

Words, yes, formulating things, creating something from your heart, it is something very necessary, yes.

Being a songwriter does not rely on an audience or other band members or a camera. I can just sit in a room and write songs.

When I try to write I try to write something different every time. That's the challenge.

We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

I'm an artist at heart.

I always loved singing and writing poetry. I always loved music, and I've loved writing my whole life. When I put them together, it was probably in my early 20s where I put words to music for the first time.

You wind up creating from silence, like painting a picture on a blank canvas that could bring tears to somebody's eyes. As songwriters, our blank canvas is silence. Then we write a song from an idea that can change somebody's life. Songwriting is the closest thing to magic that we could ever experience. That's why I love songwriting.

I wrote my first song when I was six or seven, a silly little song. But I used to write poems in high school - not songs.

My mum is an artist and very into creative expression and freedom.

If you're a songwriter, you have to do homework. You can exist for a while on the inspiration, but at some point, you have to sit down and have the discipline to write - to finish the poem, as they say.

I guess I've always liked the idea of being an artist.

I am never without my lyric book. If anything inspirational happens, I have it there so nothing's forgotten.

I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs. They all find their place in the world, but they all start off in the same place. I'm always painting and drawing as well, and it's an ongoing creative assignment.

I always wanted to do something creative, but as much as I'm creative, it's in a really hard-core, right-brained way. For me, painting doesn't do it for me. There's no constraint.

Throughout my life I have taken detours in acting and writing, but art remains my abiding passion.

I'm most happy when I am writing at night, because I need space and time to write.

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.

I knew I wanted to be creative but didn't know how.

The exact day I became a poet was April 1, 1965, the day I bought my first typewriter.