Trevor Nunn Quotes

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

There's one thing now that I experience every day when I'm making a film. I get up and think to myself, 'Am I going to be able to do it today?' I figure as long as I have that fear, I'll be alright.

Working on this album has been very emotional and super personal, and creating this character 'Cry Baby' helped me deal with my own insecurities.

The more vulnerable and the more confused the song is, the equal and opposite effect is how I feel after having written it.

It's murder to doubt yourself in life. It took until I was 45 to get to that point. As hard as it is in your work, it's harder in your life. But it can be done.

I think every writer doubts themselves, every day. You procrastinate because you're afraid. You're always afraid it's not going to be as good as you want it to be. But, the key is overcoming fear.

Everybody faces a blank piece of paper, no matter what they've written or painted or composed before. I can't imagine approaching every single new project with-without doubt.

When I have worries, fears or a love affair, I have the luck of being able to transform it into a poem.

At first I wasn't sure that I had the talent, but I did know I had a fear of failure, and that fear compelled me to fight off anything that might abet it.

People think that if you've written a book and somebody's given you a pat on the back then, you know, it's all - you're all settled, you know? You're going to be fine. I know that if I'm not confused, and really afraid, my work isn't going to be any good.

Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day.

That's what it is every time you walk into the room to write with someone new. It's like, oh god I have to take my clothes off 'my creative clothes' and let them see all of my flaws.

Pretty much everything I've written is a mix of excitement and fear.

I'm always afraid of failing. I have to quiet that fear if I'm going to get up in the morning.

As a kid from Compton, you can get all the success in the world and still question your worth.

I've been writing books because it's been my way of dealing with the demons. The act of sitting down and writing the books down has started healing process that's been long overdue.

A repressed person overcoming their repression always makes good music.

But it is the fear, not the writing that defeats me. Everything is not a masterpiece.

There are things that are shadow sides of the creative energy that are negative and all that kind of stuff. The only thing that I say to myself is, in the spirit of that quote from the Gnostic Gospels: Writing is a way to let all that stuff out into the sun.

We have all this courage as writers, but then there's this fear.

Every work coming from the creator is about getting the demons out, and each character in those stories had a different personal crisis to get through.

I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing. Dumbo got airborne with the help of a magic feather; you may feel the urge to grasp a passive verb or one of those nasty adverbs for the same reason. Just remember before you do that Dumbo didn’t need the feather; the magic was in him.

As an artist you can use your own discomfort and neuroses and difficulties and at least transform them into something else. Without that you're just neurotic and uncomfortable.

He was the crazy one who had painted himself black and defeated the world. She was the book thief without the words. Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like rain.

When I first started writing the album, "Cry Baby" was a song that I really wanted to write because it represented all of these personal insecurities that I had for a long time.