Peter De Vries Quotes

I called the guys from Promise of the Real, whom I've been playing with, and they were all on the road. Right after I hung up the phone, I wrote another song and started writing another, and I'm going, "Hey, I can't wait. I should be doing this now!" My experience tells me that when it's there, it's there, and you can't make it wait. So I got Jimmy Keltner and Paul Bushnell, two good guys, and went in and did this record ["Peace Trail"].

Music to me is spontaneous, writing is spontaneous and it's all based on not trying to do it. From beginning to end, whether it's writing a song, or playing guitar, or a particular chord sequence, or blowing a horn, it's based on improvisation and spontaneity.

You must walk that tightrope between accident and discipline. Accident by itself…so what? Discipline by itself is boring. By walking that tightrope and putting down something on a canvascoming from your guts, you have a chance of making marks that will live longer than you.

Spontaneous is what you get after the seventeenth draft.

The most potent and sacred command which can be laid upon any artist is the command: wait.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

I tend to write and record things quite quickly. You can tamper with things for years, and it's artistic laziness sometimes.

Wintertime for me is a time when I do a lot of my writing in the studio. It's a time I enjoy. And it's very reflective and a very calming time of the year. Throughout the year I gather a lot of musical inspirations, and this is where I bring them to the studio and see what will evolve musically.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

I have great difficulty sitting in the middle of the night and writing. Everything I do comes spontaneous. Sometimes it takes a long time; sometimes it comes just like that.

I've written songs sober and I've written songs high.

Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread.

It's good to have a foothold in reality, a base somewhere that's always been a base. Sharman Macdonald once said she needs life to write; she can't write if she's just in theatre all the time. I'm the same way, I think. I've always felt that if my life was all about the job, I wouldn't be so good at the job.

If anyone asks me about songwriting, I guess I'd say that you just gotta do it.

I never wrote music or arranged songs or lyrics when I was under the influence of anything but coffee. That's not gone away.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don't believe too much into inspiration, only I'm waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It's a little too easy to say that.

They say that Grandma Moses had several canvases going at the same time. Maybe it was a way for her to catch up with the time she missed while raising children and tending the farm. Like Grandma, I tend to have more than one poem or fiction going at a time. For me, it's just the way I think.

These rough sketches, which are born in an instant in the heat of inspiration, express the idea of their author in a few strokes, while on the other hand too much effort and diligence sometimes saps the vitality and powers of those who never know when to leave off.

When one's not writing poems - and I'm not at the moment - you wonder how you ever did it. It's like another country you can't reach.

The heart of creativity is discipline.

Writing is the starting point from which all goodness (and crappiness) flows.

When you think intensely and beautifully, something happens. That something is called poetry. If you think that way and speak at the same time, poetry gets in your mouth. If people hear you, it gets in their ears. If you think that way and write at the same time, then poetry gets written. But poetry exists in any case. The question is only: are you going to take part, and if so, how?

Acting is like music and you improvise. It's like jazz, there's no rhyme or reason to it. It's not a plan. You practice to music and you just play it.

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.

I feel with writing, so much of the time, I don't know how to tap in and be spontaneous and alive on a daily basis. So I don't write every day. I'm just not disciplined, and I can't be in the groove most of the time. I feel like I'm in the groove ten days a year or something. But with reading and research, I feel like I have this incredibly instinctive pleasure-driven process that ends up working out for me and inspiring me. It's almost like a maze, like I know eventually I'll hit the heart of my play if I read enough books.