Melanie Lynskey Quotes

I had a lot of songs and words and scenes stuck inside of me. So Jacknife encouraged me to bring them all out. So, in essence, 'You and Others' is my diary.

There I am, chain-smoking and watching YouTube videos in my bedroom at 6 A.M. when a spoken-word video comes on the screen. I knew I had to do it: that it was another part of me that needed to be explored.

Tracey Emin's 'Strangeland' made me see that everything I have to be creative is inside of myself.

I like the feeling of being able to confront an experience and resolve it as art.

I have a firm faith in art, a firm confidence in its being a powerful stream which carries a man to a harbor, though he himself must do his bit too.

Love is what makes you do everything. It really does conquer all. With my first album, I was writing about empowerment hoping that would make it true. And now it is. I'm in charge. I make the rules. I've been writing since I was nine years old and I'm very much involved in the creative process. And now that I'm in a happier place in my personal life, I'm spitting songs out left and right.

I started digging into parts of myself that I probably ignore and don't really get to express because Common is an artist that is conscious and is aware and is trying to put a positive energy to the world.

Before I wasn't sure what I wanted to say, but now, I have had so many different experiences that they have given me what I want to get across in my music.

I don't see it as a form of healing, because if you have wounds that are bleeding I don't think acting will ever get them to stop. But I find acting is a form of illumination.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

I kind of discovered my voice for the first time, and the more I did it, the better it got.

Doing acting opened up other creative outlets; it made me feel freer as an artist.

People can't see that if I had not been a poet, I could never have had such success as a traveler.

All I knew was that I was writing something out of my very guts, and that I was content.

You get talent when you discover the ground of your pain.

All my shows are therapy, trying to navigate interesting subjects so I can work them out and to be honest and say some things are beyond the wit of this man.

One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn't know was in you, or in the world.

I like films that probe emotional questions and inspire you to get creative and get writing, get draping, painting, cooking, whatever that thing is where you have that kind of output.

I want to make myself better and get working with some of my biggest influences and make the best music I can.

My films are always a reflection of where I am in my life.

My hope is that people experience the music and, in that, something works in them, that they realise how exceptional they are. Maybe that it inspires them to do something great in their own lives.

Until I discovered hip-hop, I felt I wasn't going to accomplish anything.

I have been inspired by countless artists over the years, but there's also times when you just gotta make your own inspiration.