Mike Shinoda Quotes

Like when you have the right title for something you're writing and you get lost - you can always go back to the title and go, "Yeah, that's what this is about."

I'm not photographing anything naked these days. I haven't been concentrating on bodies recently.

If you want to be a legitimate artist, it's more important what you say no to.

Any artist that's involved in their work is inevitably going to have a focus in what they do.

As an artist, you have to maintain focus and eliminate the distraction of second-guessing yourself based on the opinions of others.

If I spent my time wondering about what genre I wanted to be in or where I was on the charts, I wouldn't be able to write these kinds of song. I'd be too busy doing other things.

I believe artists are too focused on the younger crowd. Why would you want to focus on them? Let them do what they do. You continue to do what you do.

I want to make the songs good. I think this is my main focus.

I wish more artists would do that sort of thing - just focus on one sound on a record instead of "Here's my club banger, here's my metro booming track, and then here's my Americana song." I like albums to feel like a world. That's just me.

I have been approached to direct films, but I think everybody has their limits. For me, I want to focus all my energy and efforts on acting and give the best performance possible. For now, I am focusing on that. Who knows, in the future maybe I will change my mind.

I'd say that directing is in my heart. And that's where my focus is, like a laser beam. That's what I've been studying for a long time, and I think that everything that I've done before has contributed to the development of my craft as a director.

Don't stop. Narrow your focus to one idea, and make it work. That will give birth to all of the others. All you can do is plant the seed and water it.

Why should any of these things that happen externally distract thee? Give thyself leisure to learn some good thing: cease roving to and fro.

Water must be free for sustenance needs. Since nature gives water to us free of cost, buying and selling it for profit violates our inherent right to nature's gift and denies the poor of their human rights.

Be as fluid as water, do not give your enemies anything solid to atack

In the best of all possible worlds, directors would obsess about the quality of their storytelling, and not the details of their technical methods.

The thing that's important for me to focus on is the balancing of the tension between satisfying myself and satisfying an audience, and making something that I think is good and funny, worthwhile, small-"i" important, versus something that's going to do well.

When I'm in the studio, I become a total nerd.

Words are humanity's greatest natural resource, but most of us have trouble figuring out how to put them together. Words aren't cheap. They are very precious. They are like water, which gives life and growth and refreshment, but because it has always been abundant, we treat it cheaply. We waste it; we pollute it, and doctor it. Later we blame the quality of the water because we have misused it.

the difficult art I was attempting had, indeed a powerful fascination, before which the past faded, the future receded, and the whole of experience narrowed down to this stretch of glancing, glimmering water, and the fly I was trying to cast across it.

An effective goal focuses primarily on results rather than activity. It identifies where you want to be, and, in the process, helps you determine where you are. It gives you important information on how to get there, and it tells you when you have arrived. It unifies your efforts and energy. It gives meaning and purpose to all you do.

I don't pay attention to sales because it's not about that for me. It's about the music. Music is all I have.

I think we're inevitably going to be depressed when we focus the major part of our energy and attention on something that doesn't give us meaning, only material things.

[A novel by Henry James] is like a church lit but without a congregation to distract you, with every light and line focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverently place, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an egg-shell, a bit of string.

You are a creator; you create with your every thought. You often create by default, for you are getting what you are giving your attention to wanted or unwanted but you know by how it feels if what you are getting (creating) is what you are wanting or if it is not what you are wanting. (Where is your attention focused?)