Jonah Lehrer Quotes

No, I think that a person writes a poem because they have an inner urge of something that they want to express, and I think it's that inner urge that you want to express when you write a piece of music.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings.

There's a desire in me to express something - to match what I hear in my head.

The real artist has no idea that he is sacrificing himself for art. He does what he does for one reason and one reason only-he can't help doing it.

At the end of the day, my life isn't about other people's work. I've got to stop giving stuff away. I've got my own stories to tell, and a great need to tell them. I've got these images, these thoughts in my head, and I need to find a way to cope with them.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That's why we paint, that's why we dare to love someone - because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

When I get an artistic itch, I have to scratch it.

I think an artist who has it in their heart to do or say something, they'll say it. It's not something that's mandatory, but it will come out.

I'm just here to do the best that I can do with the music that I make, and I'm not making it for any other reason than I feel like I have to. These ideas have to be created because they're in me, and if I leave them in my head, I'll go crazy.

I cannot say why I wanted to paint. The only answer is in the pictures themselves.

Just when I think I hate fashion, I hate clothes, I'm seized by this crazy thing that I have to do. I have this little studio now where I just draw. I can be in the room for three days and not even look up.

Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It's the same with me and writing.

I think they saw me as something like a deliverer, a way out. My means of expression, my music, was a way in which a lot of people wished they could express themselves and couldn't.

The whole point of writing is to have something in your gut or in your soul or in your mind that's burning to be written.

For me it's all about personal vision; is there something about a subject that uniquely speaks to me.

The cavemen, when they saw the antelopes, they had to scratch them on to the caves because they needed to express the immediacy of what they were being affected by - and I love that. That is why I do what I do. I need to express myself.

I only do solo albums when songs are screaming at me to be let out of my mind.

Most good media come out of somebody saying, 'This should exist; this is something I want to read.'

This is what I learned: that everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.

There are two kinds of artists in this world; those that work because the spirit is in them, and they cannot be silent if they would, and those that speak from a conscientious desire to make apparent to others the beauty that has awakened their own admiration.

Like everything, what compels one to put pen to paper is a great question.

We don't choose the books we write; they choose us.

I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew that there was something inside me that wanted me to tell who I was, and that would have come out even if I didn't want it.

I'm always fascinated by why a person becomes a writer.

My capacity for wanting to create has never faltered. If anything, it's gained momentum.