Katie Aselton Quotes

When I begin, theoretically and practically I can smear anything I want on the canvas. Then there's a condition I have to react to, by changing it or destroying it.

I wanted to express myself more fully through writing and directing. It just feels like a package deal. Anytime you create anything, you try to exert mastery over your world.

I love the freedom of writing and then I love the realization of directing. I can't favor one or the other. I enjoy both parts of the process.

I'm living as an artist, and that's a staggering feeling, it's a total luxury. And because you have this amazing chance, with so much freedom, I'm determined to make something that is worth that. I feel this responsibility - to create something that makes an audience feel, which takes them somewhere. But that's very hard to achieve.

I enjoy directing more when I don't have to direct myself. I like when I can just be the director.

With acting I am being led by the script, other actors, the director, etc. But with songwriting I feel it is much more self reliant and allows me to be in the creative experience without being as dependent on others.

There's a lot of creative freedom. Acting is a whole boatload of fun, but I prefer to do it on my own terms.

In fact, most artists want to make things a bit more difficult for themselves as they go along, to challenge themselves.

But at a certain point, and I don't really know... people have asked me this. I don't know exactly what it was that pushed me towards directing, but I think it was a naive notion that if I directed I would be able to play all the roles. A kind of greed.

I was raised around a lot of artists, musicians, photographers, painters and people that were in theater. Just having the art-communal hippie experience as a child, there wasn't a clear line that was drawn. We celebrated creative experience and creative expression. We didn't try and curtail it and stunt any of that kind of growth.

That's how I like to do it with actors, have them really go for it and I'll tell them when it's too much. It's always easier to bring it back then to push it further.

For me, to be perfectly honest, the part of my brain that was stimulated by directing was much more exciting than a typical day of acting.

The acting is something that will always be a part of my life, but the writing gives me a lot more creative freedom. You're a pawn in somebody else's chess game, whereas as a writer and as a director, you get to call the shots. And that's very thrilling.

I allowed artists to play for as long as they felt they could justifiably continue to create.

I've always believed that the director does whatever the hell he wants. That's what you sign on for as an actor - I can't stand it when you have actors who are trying to leverage directors into doing things they don't want to do.

I want to direct one day. I want to write my own thing and really be behind the scenes because you have more creative control.

I always feel like it is a privilege to be able to be an artist and to be able to exhibit my work all over the world.

I'm actually living my life with the material I choose to work with.

For me, acting is like a holiday. When you're directing, you have a strong sense of responsibility for others. It's exciting but exhausting, especially when you're like me: always wanting to break the rules.

Once you walk off the set, if you're an actor, the rest isn't your responsibility, which I like a lot. I'm not responsible for the final product, which is why it's always a pleasure when you see it's in the hands of the people afterwards putting it together.

When you have somebody writing or acting for you, you have to be free to have them hate you so you can get your ideas across without worrying.

It's just a campy blast. I just want to do as little as I can and make it good, and try not to sell out. I'm sure I will, but I'm just trying to postpone it.

I am drawn to writing and directing as it is most like the feeling I had when I was a teenager with my puppet theatre. You are more in control of everything and involved in every aspect of production, so more challenged and fulfilled.

And, we put a lot more value, or at least I personally put a lot more value, on the creative values and creative challenges of something than the commercial necessities.

There's not a lot of art forms where you can control your presentation and your ideas.