Michael Pitt Quotes

Creativity has more to do with the elimination of the inessential than with inventing something new.

Art is about eliminating almost everything in order to focus on the thing that you need to talk about.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

I try to stay focused on my creativity.

Through your life, most people peel away the junk that's not useful, that's superfluous. You are determined to peel that away. I do one thing at a time. One man at a time. One car. One house. One child. One job.

If you've lost focus, just sit down and be still. Take the idea and rock it to and fro. Keep some of it and throw some away, and it will renew itself. You need do no more.

The simpler I keep things, the better I play.

That's been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

I used to have this debate with Steve Jobs, and he would always say, 'You guys are doing too much stuff.' He did a good job of doing one or two things really well. We'd like to have a bigger impact on the world by doing more things.

I sometimes think less is more. If you cut yourself in too many places, it is hard to execute.

So much of artistic creation is just exclusion. It's not creating things; it's just excluding things that really aren't going to be helpful.

Sometimes I think albums are so ambitious, they don't stand as bodies of work because you try to achieve so much, and sometimes we need to do less. Say less.

I do better in life when my world seems a little smaller.

For me to be creative, I have to have peace.

Interesting things happen when the creative impulse is cultivated with curiosity, freedom and intensity.

There is but one art, to omit! Oh, if I knew how to omit I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knows how to omit would make an Iliad of a daily paper.

Simplicity requires ruthlessness.

I work using the Brian Eno school of thinking: limit your tools, focus on one thing and just make it work… You become very inventive with the restrictions you give yourself.

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.

In a certain way, you get some new tools to work with, but I don't know if it ultimately makes the creative process any easier.

I love design, so it's important for me to have a creative outlet.

Don't stop. Narrow your focus to one idea, and make it work. That will give birth to all of the others. All you can do is plant the seed and water it.

I'd rather not ever make anything overly simple just because I'm scared people won't get it.

I used to try to write around the edges, but now I try to walk a more direct line.

I feel like the phone was in my way. So I got rid of the phone to focus.