Brendan Gleeson Quotes

When you are in the field of creativity, you lose track of time. Only the flow exists.

When I'm writing, I'm just in it and trying to figure out what seems best.

Music is a big thing for me when I'm shooting. It gets me in a groove.

I get into a zone where I'm really in my own world when I make music.

When I'm painting and in the zone, it's difficult for me to stop. It can take me half a day to get into that space, and once I do, I only talk to a certain few people who won't disrupt it. Home to sleep and back at it, nothing else outside of getting food. Everything else is an annoyance getting in my way.

In the experience of art, time seems not to exist. When I'm writing and think, "I've been working for two hours," I've actually been working for seven.

When I am in a painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc, because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.

When I sit down to make music, I try to enter a flow; I always open a blank session and just make something that I feel like making.

If I'm really working on something, writing or painting or really concentrating, I don't even think about brushing my hair.

When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and it is all just THERE. I think of the next word no more than the composer thinks of the next note.

Shooting a movie is the worst milieu for creative work ever devised by man.

Writing is like being in a dream state or under self-directed hypnosis. It induces a state of recall that - while not perfect - is pretty spooky.

Making the films is never easy, but actually that aspect of trying to make a better film or to keep the standard high is something that comes organically.

I'm trying to make something every time that feels new and surprises people. Hopefully at least one person. But it's not like I turn it off. I don't make a movie and then go back to my normal life. When I'm finishing one movie the next day I'm thinking about the next one.

You don’t think when you play music, you just try to play and be in it. It is the same for me when the writing is going really well. It’s the same kind of feeling. I’m just in it. It’s not the words, it’s not the sentences, I’m not aware of it. Then it’s good.

Making a film is a beautiful mystery. You go deep into the wood, and you don't want to come out of that wood.

I don't approach my acting as just saying a few lines and then going off-screen. It's a craft. I really invest in trying to make it a craft.

Painting a picture is like trying to fight a battle.

People ask me how I make music. I tell them I just step into it. It's like stepping into a river and joining the flow. Every moment in the river has its song.

One gets into a state of creativity by conscious work.

I was just trying to make a nice little movie... It wasn't until I saw it all put together that I realized this was something remarkable.

I think the reason I like making movies sometimes more than doing TV is that you have one task, you only have a certain amount of time to do it, and then it is done. And I really like focusing in that way.

Part of my function as a writer is to dream awake. And that usually happens. If I sit down to write in the morning, in the beginning of that writing session and the ending of that session, I'm aware that I'm writing. I'm aware of my surroundings. It's like shallow sleep on both ends, when you go to bed and when you wake up. But in the middle, the world is gone and I'm able to see better.

In a way, after you're done directing there is a sense of amnesia that washes over you, you can't exactly remember how you did things. It's a zone, just like an athlete, when they can't remember what they did, but somehow got it done.

With film, oftentimes you work in a vacuum and then you get on a high wire and then you try it and then the day's over and that piece of film exists somewhere in a vault for 1000,000 years and that's it.