Ian Anderson Quotes

Inevitably any series that goes on too long will reach a point where it starts struggling for ideas, so I've always been really aware of getting out while the going's good.

In 2012, I really thought, 'That's it. It's over. I've written what I can write.'

You can only be independently creative for so long until your brain burns out.

For the next three plus years, I really was not in creative shape. That part of my brain was not functioning.

You know, most good playwrights write seven good plays and then something happens and after that they're crap.

It is comparatively easy to become a writer; staying a writer, resisting formulaic work, generating one's own creativity - that's a much tougher matter.

No one stopped me from playing when I was alone, but there were times when I wasn't able to, though I wanted to... There were times when nothing played back. Writers call it 'writer's block.' For kids there are other names for that feeling, though kids don't usually know them.

As creators, we feel constant demand for innovation from the world. This puts immense pressure on the creative process and oftentimes can have a dampening effect.

Some people make a great film and then they can't follow up.

As an artist, it's possible to get tired of yourself.

Many artists give up after a while.

The end of the Nineties was an unhappy Primus camp. I hit a creative stagnation that wasn't helping us forward, and the personal elements, it just was time to stop.

I believe that writer's block is a symptom. It's not a disease, it's the symptom of a disease. So what I try to do is kind of do it like 'House'; write down the symptom and write down the other symptoms. Try to work backwards to figure out what the problem is.

Writer's block is for people who have the luxury of time.

I've experienced writer's block, but never for more than a few days.

I think in my late 20s, I was starting to enter that realm of complacency, which is the most terrifying place I can imagine as an artist. I felt time creeping up on me.

The thing I worry about is, what happens when your talent flees? Because you see that with writers sometimes: they start writing these awful books. And there's something sort of horrifying about it.

When an artist becomes complacent, he dies.

Most artists have retired too absolutely; they grow rusty, inflexible to the flow of currents.

The problem as you get older is, from my perspective, after a certain amount of songs, you tend to start writing something and then you stop and say, 'Wait, I think I've written that before.'

The reality of the writer's world is that you set yourself up for future disappointment with every success that you deliver because you end up raising your audience's expectations.

That's what makes writer's block so painful. You think the well has run dry, maybe somewhere in the heavens the tap has been turned off. That's beyond frightening.

This motion-picture muddle had distracted me from my writing.

You really can't bring about anything new with art.

I quit comics because I got completely sick of it. I was drawing comics all the time and didn't have the time or energy to do anything else. That got to me in the end.