John Hodgman Quotes

I feel fiery in my life. I feel fiery in my art.

If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.

Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.

My desire to be an artist really came out of being broke and unemployed and incapable of holding a job down. That's what it was driven by for sure.

All my inspiration comes from life. That's how it never stops, in a way.

I can only speak for myself - there were times when I just wasn't inspired by creating music.

Art is about expressing the true nature of the human spirit in whatever way one wishes to express it. If it is honest, it is beautiful. If it is not honest, it is obvious.

Beauty awakens the soul to act.

There are autobiographical elements to the albums, and when I write, I always reference my own life as well as other things, so I'm just like any novelist or any fiction writer who tells stories.

My capacity for wanting to create has never faltered. If anything, it's gained momentum.

No one can be an artist without a rich inner life.

Whatever's going on in my life shows up in the writing room.

The topics just kind of come to me. If they are relevant, it's because they're happening in the world around me, and it's affecting me. Poetry is my way of dealing with it.

I like being surrounded by all the stuff that makes me feel creative and inspires me.

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

A lot of my songs are about things that concern me personally, not a heightened version of myself or any of the characters that I play.

My creative life is a constant struggle to achieve a balance between letting things flow in and letting things flow out.

But it's hard for me to pinpoint where all my characters and dialogue come from - imagination or real life. My memoir, of course, was all about my past, and many of the short stories cleave very closely to my life, but the more stories I wrote in the collection, the more that seemed to be invented, but who knows... I think I'm writing about a young woman with acne who shoplifts, but I'm really writing about myself.

It's inspiring just to work on something and just kind of keep the creative juices flowing.

When you start to engage with your creative processes, it shakes up all your impulses, and they all kind of inform one another.

Fool," said my muse to me. "Look in thy heart and write.

When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love and faith.

... Too often we fail to recognize and pay tribute to the creative spirit. It is that spirit that creates our jobs.

Sex energy is the creative energy of all geniuses. There never has been, and never will be a great leader, builder or artist lacking in the driving force of sex.

With the way I like to work, I always have to draw [inspiration] from somewhere, and the best place to take from is your own life.