St. Lucia Quotes

All I try to do is to write music that feels meaningful to me, that has commitment and passion behind it.

I need my 'art work' or 'entertainment work' or whatever to have empathy for or connection to the way I experience the world as a person.

When we started writing this kind of music in the beginning, I didn't think that many people would listen to it, but over the years our fan base just kept growing and growing. Now, it's like we do it for us and our fans.

What has made it work, or what makes certain paintings successful or not, has to do with my being a painter and a thinking, feeling person, more than my sex, color, height, origin.

I think my painting is so autobiographical if anyone can take the trouble to read it.

Music, to me, is the most beautiful form, and I love film because film is very related to music. It moves by you in its own rhythm. It's not like reading a book or looking at a painting. It gives you its own time frame, like music, so they are very connected for me. But music to me is the biggest inspiration. When I get depressed, or anything, I go "think of all the music I haven't even heard yet!" So, it's the one thing. Imagine the world without music. Man, just hand me a gun, will you?

While I can hire out the portrait, I don't, because it's just - that's where I shine. You know, that's my blood sport.

When I write, I tend toward melancholy, and the few times that I've tried pure joy in music, it doesn't really work that well. The joy can be through catharsis. I think that's what I do well, and observation.

I think it's one of the nicest privileges as an actor is to know that you can move people in one moment, make them think about their lives, or make them laugh or make them cry or make them understand something. Or just make them feel something because I think so many of us, including myself, spend too much time not feeling enough, you know?

I think... it is somehow very useful, and maybe even essential, for a fine artist to have to somehow make his peace on the canvas with all the things he cannot do. That is what attracts us to serious paintings, I think: that shortfall, which we might call 'personality,' or maybe even 'pain.'

What is the truth is that every one of my films is a film that I'd love to go see, and I think that's very important because I always think it's a mistake to make movies for other people, or to make them for a demographic, or try to second guess an audience.

Write to the mind and heart, and let the ear Glean after what it can.

I guess it's one thing to play a character and relate to a character, and it's a lot closer to me than people might think. They are obviously watching a person with another name. But when they are listening to my music, it's way more me and my story and my words . . . that is the main difference in that.

All you can do as an artist is do what you think is an extension of you. You put down on paper ... who you are. That's what being an artist is all about. And when it gets done, you don't look back at it and say, Oh, I could have done that better.

Try to distill the character of your subject. Understand how he moves, thinks, acts. It's difficult to put into words. Consider each drawing as a problem that did not exist before, and then try to solve that problem to the best of your ability. That i what caricature is all about

I started to write songs. And I started to like what I was writing. I think it's a new way for me to express things that are closer to myself than when I play a role, because, of course, it's really not me. I'm finding a new way. I don't know what it's going to be. But I know that I will need to give it to people one day.

I think it's the best thing I've ever done. I think it's realistic, and it's true to the me that has been developing over the years. I like first-person music.

I think my stance and my way of life is my most important art.

I am a reflection of what I sing. Sometimes I have to get serious because the things Ive been through are serious.

I wanted to be a visual artist, but I realized I was more affected by what I read than by what I saw. I would go to a show at a museum and look at a painting and say, 'Oh I wish I owned that,' and that would be the end of my relationship with a painting. With a short story I would read or with an author I would discover I could be haunted. It would affect my mood and affect the way that I saw the world. I thought, wow, it would be amazing to be able to do that.

There is nothing like understanding that your work has touched somebody. That is the sole purpose of acting. To be able to move and inspire. If I can do that for one person it is already changing the world and that makes me feel accomplished.

My family life, my adoption - it could be related to the songs, but I think the songs are deeper than that. They're not just about this experience.

I think most actors rarely get the opportunity to play something really close to you and speaks to something you deeply believe.

Only connect!...Only connect the prose and the passion.

The kind of poetry I write, lyric poetry, I think is really concerned with intimacy, with mystery. That needn't be religious mystery, there are mysteries to do with everyday life.