Romain Rolland Quotes

Mozart was very much an arrested adolescent.

But I can only write what the muse allows me to write. I cannot choose, I can only do what I am given, and I feel pleased when I feel close to concrete poetry - still.

There's a good many pictures I'd like to make; we'll see how many I'll be allowed to make.

If a director brings a guy to their movie who does improv, they've got to let him do what he does - otherwise it's like bringing Michael Jordan to your basketball team and telling him to just pass the ball and don't shoot.

In Mozart and Salieri we see the contrast between the genius which does what it must and the talent which does what it can.

It betrays hubris on the part of the artist to think his medium is limiting him, and I think we all recognize this.

In a way, making Martin Ellingham the way he is was a corrective exercise for my acting - to keep a bit still and show a little control. I do like it - it's like having an instrument that you can play and that you can pick up and enjoy playing.

No actor has complete freedom.

I think it's absolutely possible to write a song and go somewhere where no one's been before, uncharted territory. In terms of content, I see limitations where there should be none. I know there are things I wouldn't write about, but that shouldn't be the case. You should be able to make a song out of anything, out of any situation.

Every great poem is in itself limited by necessity, but in its suggestions unlimited and infinite.

I think from a major-label perspective, if you were on the flip side of things and that's the world you were used to working in, your interpretation could be, "Oh, they're having trouble writing songs," when really it's like, "No, I'm not ready to write songs, I don't want to write a song right now, if I did write a song, it would be forced."

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is the only musician who had as much knowledge asgenius, and as much genius as knowledge.

As a journalist, I would talk to writers, directors, creative people, and discover that for an awful lot of them, the moment they became successful, that was all they were allowed to do. So you end up talking to the bestselling science-fiction author who wrote a historical-fiction novel that everybody loved, but no one would publish.

So, what is creative freedom? We can make what we want, how we want. The only constraint is: not for any budget.

I invest because I'm really a firm believer in letting the artist make their work, if you choose to work with an artist then you give them the go-ahead.

I think it's possible to be free in a big production. It's the eye of the director and the actor and the story.

...what I try to do is a good bad picture. I work it out very carefully, and then I do something that looks as if it went wrong.

I always like the studio best, once I got the hang of it and the control. I like it because it's complete control

I write about what I want to write about, and so the film comes out as a very personal expression even if its subject matter is totally prefabricated.

If the director wishes to print it, then you have a series of choices, maybe millions of choices within that minute-and-a-half, or 80 seconds, or 2 minutes or however long or short the take is, you have all those choices committed to celluloid. I find that absolutely thrilling.

I had a little more freedom when I started sampling because you could actually do what you wanted to do.

In music industry they always want you to write something like the one that was popular. And that's something you kind of have to just - sometimes you just say yes to people, like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure," and then you just write the one you want to write.

I want to be in cahoots with bands who want to make the record of their dreams.

Treat your audience like poets and geniuses and they’ll have the chance to become them.

Well, I don't believe there are subjects that can't be painted, but there are a lot of things that I personally can't paint.