Dan Mintz Quotes

The creative act is also in a small way a suffering act - we start out with our ego, this hope of making this thing whatever it be, but so often it eludes us and it collapses and we kind of regress into this mental suffering, we can't find what we're looking for.

A large part of the creative process is tolerating the gap between the glorious image you had in your mind and the sad thing you've just made.

I don't have a single complete show or movie or anything else that I could look at and say, 'Nailed that one.' But endless dissatisfaction is, I suppose, what gets us out of bed in the morning.

I feel like a lot of time my writing is like having about twenty boxes of Christmas decorations. But no tree. You're going, Where do I put this? Then they go, Okay, you can have a tree, but we'll blindfold you and you gotta cut it down with a spoon.

I'm in a foul mood as I'm making stupid mistakes... This morning I lost beyond repair a painting with which I had been happy, having done about twenty sessions on it; it had to be thoroughly scraped away... what a rage I was in!

I start a lot of songs and throw them out because the energy is not right. It's almost like the file becomes cursed. I have to delete it.

I don't feel prolific. I feel like I'm plodding along. Each day you sit down, and you hope that you get your work done.

My novel, which I had started with such hope shortly after publishing my first book of stories, wouldn't budge past the 75-page mark. Nothing I wrote past page 75 made any kind of sense. Nothing. Which would have been fine if the first 75 pages hadn't been pretty damn cool.

I get so fed up with the making of an album taking over my life - it's all I can think about or talk about. You find yourself in a rut and lacking inspiration and it's hard to get out of that because I'm working alone in the studio.

What I wanted and what I visualized while composing has not always been realized.

I think that's just part of how it is with making art. Sometimes you're just flooded with ideas, and then other times you're questioning all the ideas you ever had before, and everything is just... lame.

Most artists have experienced the creative block. We get stuck in our work. We beat our head against the wall: nothing. Sometimes, it is because we are trying something at the wrong time.

Everything is my demon muse. I have a muse which whispers in my ear and says, 'Do this, do that,' but it's my demon who provokes me.

So you have to keep waiting and then they give you the script and it's terrible. Then you have to go to the rewrite and they're very upset because you didn't like it. I went through that for seven years.

Honestly, I envy painters, who can have a masterpiece in one morning. Or musicians, who can write something in 30 minutes and arrange it in an hour, sometimes. 'Cause with this, with writing, you can occasionally feel like a caveman, like you've been working with pitch and tar on this brush.

I'm envious of writers and musicians. I think it must be so difficult. Not just the frustration, but the discipline.

Anytime that I've felt uninspired, I don't force myself to sit down and write. I only do it when I feel the impulse.

Well, thing is, after they cancelled 'Zen', I didn't work for eight months. And in that case, it was not my choice. After I've done something that I'm really proud of and I think changes the way I'm perceived, the immediate reaction is: nothing.

Before 'Whiplash,' I'd had a string of failed scripts. I'd pour my blood, sweat and tears into them, and no one would like them.

Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing - then a work of art may happen.

I think I need the demons in order to write, but the demons have gone. It bothers me a lot. I've tried and tried, but I just can't seem to find a melody.

You can't rush inspiration.

There are whole months at a time when my head is so full of ideas that I wake in the middle of the night and lie in the dark telling myself stories. There are also long, dark nights when I just know I'll never write another word: I'm finished, empty, a husk... Oh dear, yes, twitch, yawn, how I've suffered insomnia for my art.

And when you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that spot you were at before.

Any working composer or painter or sculptor will tell you that inspiration comes at the eighth hour of labour rather than as a bolt out of the blue. We have to get our vanities and our preconceptions out of the way and do the work in the time allotted.