Duncan Sheik Quotes

The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress.

I found that dance, music, and literature is how I made sense of the world... it pushed me to think of things bigger than life's daily routines... to think beyond what is immediate or convenient.

Every artist seems to me to have the job of bearing witness to the world we live in. To some extent I think of all of us as artists, because we have voices and we are each of us unique.

I make films for the 16-year-old in myself sometimes.

I think that's one of the greatest gifts you get if you're successful at something like music or film or photography - any of the arts - you can sit there and think. It's so much fun to sit there and think and wonder about the world and the universe.

Hip Hop is an extension of our very being, and so the study of Hip Hop is the study of self-expression leading to the study of one's true self.

I just wanted to write about stuff that was happening in real life, and that's not just love songs about your girlfriend.

A lot of my music is inspired by personal situations in my life.

Music, life, a lot of the things that we go through in the world, a lot of questions that we have about the world inspires me.

I think it's the job of the artist to reflect the times and also reflect his or her views of the world.

When I see my movies on the editing table, I do think I could have done them a certain way. The satisfaction is never there even when I'm directing a film. You need to have the feeling that you could have done this better.

Artists are often the barometers of society.

It's logical that people from bad times will reflect their feelings in their communication. Music is part of the communication. If you lived it, you can do it.

One gets tired of the role critics are supposed to have in this culture: It's like being the piano player in a whorehouse; you don't have any control over the action going on upstairs.

At a young age, I really wanted to make music and make my own sort of thing. I'm sure if it wasn't music, it would have been writing, or it would have been maybe painting. I just always had the drive to try and make something with my hands and to just pull something out of myself and shape it and see it in front of me, if that makes any sense.

Being a creative person. It's so much more rewarding when you find things on your own, to live whatever the writers are writing or to display what the director is looking for. You are the thing that everybody uses to get the story out.

You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.

I've always associated consciousness with artists like Bob Marley or Joni Mitchell or Bob Dylan. You know, artists that really talked about what was going on in the world and really artists that are timeless.

Music mirrors where we should go, have gone and can go. Music is an abstraction.

Music is the mirror of reality.

The guitar is your first wings. It's assigned and designed to unfold your vision and imagination.

I do love making films. I want to be a filmmaker that grows and progresses and does keep trying to push myself. I think that's it... and a bit of confidence maybe.

L.A. has been really inspiring towards me for the last one and a half years. There is a lot going on here now. I've been here before, when I was younger, but I've never had this feeling about it. There are a lot of creative things bubbling in the atmosphere. It's so far away from everything else, which makes it a strange, exotic city. When you want to discover yourself, I think this is a good place to be. You don't feel like you are in a real place and I think that can be very good for making music or art.

There are, it seems, two muses: The Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say, 'It is yet more difficult than you thought.' It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.

I am going to write my symphony; I'm just going to start tomorrow.