J. Tillman Quotes

The real drawback when you write with a partner is that where you want it to go and where they want it to go is similar, but not exactly lined up, and that's where it's going to lead you into trouble.

This is one of my lesser moments, and one I'm not proud to admit to, but there's always a time I feel the need to have control over the process and try to defend the song from the person I'm writing with. It never, ever helps and always causes problems.

As a writer who has collaborated on projects, you give your life over to that project.

'American Graffiti' was unpleasant because of the fact that there was no money, no time, and I was compromising myself to death.

I share an office with Jason Sudeikis, and I'm friends with him, so I end up writing for him a lot.

I like to write with people I have a relationship with; otherwise it's kind of scary, and you hold back because you don't want to pour your guts out to someone you never met.

It's really hard as a screenwriter, you feel like you have a vision and then you turn it over to a director and you have to let it go.

If you're going to write a song, try to get together with a collaborator because it's better to write with collaborators.

Whenever you have the creator pulling your card and saying they want you to be a part of it, you're in a pretty good position.

I believe the better I can write on my own, the better I can be of service in a co-write. The big thing with a co-write is trust, and it's not so much what you get the first time you sit down with that writer. It's the relationship that you build that you're in. So you can trust throwing out all your ideas and how strong you think they might be.

That first writing session, what Dan Hill calls a creative blind date, is always a real challenge, and you bring that back to your partner when you return to writing with them.

She could only write with him at night and she was wasting her days just sitting around. So he thought I could write with her during the day. And that was Carole King.

Three writers together would be a nightmare of obstreperous self-consciousness.

You shoot yourself in the foot when you think, 'We have to get a good scary movie director to do a script by another scary movie writer.'

It's never easy to adapt a book, especially as the author, because it's as if you're chopping off appendages. It really feels painful to decide what has to go.

What happens is you submit your script with an idea of what the budget might be, and the financier will offer you less than that. In order to do it for less, it means cutting out the art, usually.

Writing on my own versus co-writing kind of is the exact same thing because we don't sit in the same room when we write. We're always writing alone anyway.

If you understand each other's way of thinking, you understand what kind of film someone is trying to make, and all the ideas that I come up with will fit into that film.

There's a fairy story called the 'The Shoemaker and the Elves' where this old cobbler keeps leaving leather out overnight and wakes up the next day, and there's a new pair of shoes. Co-authoring is a little like that. You send off the manuscript to your partner, and a few days later, you check your email, and hey, there's more book in here!

In an ideal world, as a director, you usually wish you could do your own thing and not have to take anyone else's point of view into account, but occasionally you work with someone like Robyn, who brings a new set of ideas to the table, and the whole ends up much greater than the sum of the parts.

For 'Hey Monday,' there were songs that I co-wrote with songwriters or producers, but our last EP, the whole band did everything together. I've had a lot of experience with co-writes, which is basically what I'm doing now. I am writing things on my own, but I really believe co-writing makes you a better writer.

It's hard to give your song away. They're like your kids.

I'm reclusive when it comes to me giving art away because I get real sensitive about that and critiques.

Sometimes, you have to sacrifice your talent to please the public.

I feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is - I don't even want to say that it's mine, because it's yours.